Not Your Friendly Neighborhood Uzumaki
by Dark Patrician
Summary: In just about every Spiderman/Naruto crossover Naruto gains the powers of Spiderman or Venom somehow. This not one of those stories. What if Naruto got the powers of somebody else? Or more than one person?
1. Chapter 1: Down the Bottomless Chasm

**Not Your Friendly Neighborhood Uzumaki**

By Dark Patrician

_(Hi everybody and welcome to my first ever attempt at writing Naruto fan-fiction. Anyway, in the original cannon, Jiraiya trained Naruto between fifteen days and three weeks before throwing him into a canyon. Naruto managed to contact the Kyuubi and received the chakra/yokai necessary to summon Gamabunta and escape. This is not the original canon, I don't own the original canon Kishimoto does like it or not, for better or for worse, etc, etc. I also do not own Spiderman and all associated titles as these belong to Marvel, and the idea belongs to the irreplaceable Stan Lee. Does anybody else wish he was their grandpa, because he seems like he'd make an awesome grandparent. Our story starts lets say…Day 15 of training and change how things might have gone, shall we?)_

**Chapter One: Down the Bottomless Chasm**

Hello, my name is Naruto Uzumaki. Thirteen years ago, for some reason, the Kyuubi no Kitsune attacked the village of Konoha. Shortly after its appearance, the Fourth Hokage gave up his life to seal that nine tailed fox demon into a baby. That baby was me. Why me I don't know, but if I ever see that bastard the very least I'm going to do to him is punch him in the face.

Hours after the sealing, the Third Hokage announced the truth about the Kyuubi's defeat to the village. Seconds later, their hatred of me began. Fast forward twelve years…twelve long, glare filled, villager cursing under their breath years later and I finally became a ninja. Sure it took three tries, being tricked by Mizuki into stealing the Sacred Scroll of Sealing, learning the A ranked technique _Kage Bushin no Jutsu_, and beating the ever loving crap out of Mizuki, but hey at the end of the night, I'm a ninja.

Over the course of the next nine months, my "team" would follow a pretty standard routine, Sakura, Sasuke, and I would arrive at the training ground around 7 AM and wait for Kakashi to arrive; three hours later he'd arrive making some lame excuse for his lateness followed by a couple hours of D-rank missions (i.e. 'lets do somebody's chores for them'), lunch, then 'training' (i.e. "Naruto, do some chakra control exercises. Sasuke, let's do some taijutsu training. Sakura, fawn of Sasuke and praise him for just breathing correctly,") and then we go home and start over tomorrow. Same shit, different day.

Mission wise, things have been interesting. I saved Wave Country, watched a missing-nin kill an evil business-midget, lost the first person I probably could have considered a friend (Rest in Peace, Haku), and sometime between the forming of the team and now, completed about a billion forgettable D-rank missions, (Seriously is it that hard to rake leaves or paint a fence?).

Then comes the Chunnin Exam: first, show off the vital ninja skill of taking a test; then we had a timed survival test under the eye of an exhibitionist ninja, can't blame her though, it'd be a shame to hide a body like that; get into a fight with a sannin, watch my 'teammate' get a tattoo and then get knocked out by a punch to the gut, survive the battle, wake up in time to watch Sasuke's tattoo spread and turn him into a psycho; get to the tower; watch some good matches, some one-sided matches, plus a few disappointing matches (Kind of sad how the girl on girl fights were the least interesting, isn't it?), along the way kick Kiba's ass, and then swear to beat Neji for Hinata on my nindo (Why'd I do that anyway? I barely know her. Maybe I got a concussion after the whole 'snake punch to the gut' thing).

So now we're up to two weeks plus ago, I ask Kakashi to teach me to fight Neji; instead, he pawned me off onto Ebisu, Konohamaru's trainer. A few hours later, Ebisu gets his ass handed to him by Jiraiya who became my new sensei after some persuasion. For the next two weeks Jiraiya tried to teach me how to summon toads. Key word "tried", here's his training method in a nutshell: I perform the summoning technique just as he explained it (the only time he did so), a tadpole/small toad appears, he insults me and tells me to do it again, rinse, and repeat. That's it, no help, no words of encouragement, no hints, hell he doesn't even pay any attention to me until the toad shows up. He may be a great ninja, but he sucks as badly as Kakashi as a teacher.

Anyway why am I telling you all this? Well fifteen seconds ago, Jiraiya threw me off of a cliff to determine if he would keep training me, after making me run out of chakra with his stupid toad summoning.

_Flashback_

I regained consciousness after making summon attempt 37,192, a frog with a tadpole tail minus the fin part and red comma things on the back if you care, after Jiraiya dropped me on my face. I staggered to my feet and came face to face with the Toad Sage, and for once he actually looked serious. "The training ends today," he began in his gruff voice, "If you don't want to die figure it out yourself." He then pokes me in the forehead with a finger, which sends me flying out of the woods and off the edge of this cliff with sharp rocks jutting off the sides.

_End Flashback_

What kind of training is this? What is he trying to do, kill me? Wait…that's it…oh my god he's trying to kill me…really trying to kill me…that bastard! Oh that's it, if Orochimaru didn't kill me then there's no way in hell I'm letting this toad bastard beat me!

Wait, there's a ledge coming up fast below me…if I focus my chakra to my arms and legs maybe I can stick to it. Thirty feet…twenty feet…ten…five…one…got it!

_CRACK!_

Don't got it, my palm hit the ledge straight on causing me to swing slightly before the crack happened and I lost my grip. I think my right arm is broken, is that bone? Oh I hope that's not bone. Okay, don't panic you're just plummeting to your death with a broken arm. I close my eyes for a second to focus…

_DRIP_

…and reopen them to find that I have somehow been transported to a sewer somewhere, perfectly normal happening right? Before I have time to focus on where I'm at and how I've gotten here, a loud growl echoes through the tunnels as if calling me to find it, and find it I must.

I wander up and down the various tunnels of the sewer until eventually I find myself in front of a cage door held shut by a piece of paper with the word 'Seal' written on it and a pair of glowing red eyes and a frowning mouth full of teeth behind it.

"Why are you here, human?" the eyes ask.

"Who…what are you?" I ask back.

"I'm hurt human, we've been together your entire life and you don't recognize me?" the voice replies mockingly.

"Kyuubi," I realize out loud. "All right, if you're inside my body then you need to pay me rent. So how about giving me some of your chakra to get us out of this mess!"

"Prisoners don't pay rent," the Kyuubi replied mockingly.

"Listen fox, if I don't get out of this mess then I'll die, and if I die…"

"Then I'll die," Kyuubi finished as its harsh stare turning into one of acceptance. "No thanks, unlike you I'm ready to die." Of all the responses the demon fox could have come up with, this was one I wasn't expecting.

"You want to die?"

"Yes," the Kyuubi replied simply.

"Why?"

"I am far older than you can even comprehend human. I have seen far too many friends and family members die. Demonkind has been on the decline for the past few millennia," the Kyuubi replied solemnly. "They've been killed by each other for land or food, assassinated by your kind because they exist and look different then you, or just disappeared." The beast behind those eyes paused as if remembering things long past. "Hell, I haven't seen a kitsune in over a century so I'm probably the last of them. And there's no way in hell that I'm going to be the last of the kitsune and the last of the demons! This is why I allowed my self to be sealed, so that when my host died, I could be reunited with my kin."

"What about me?" I roared back. "I'm not ready to die, what did I do to deserve this fate!"

"Perhaps some member of your family committed a sin against Kami," the Kyuubi offered. "I neither know nor care why we were brought together. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to spend our last moments of life preparing for our death." I don't know how the fox did it; by a thin and quick tendril of red…something struck me forcing my eyes shut on instinct. I opened my eyes ready to fight the red thing only to find myself back where I started, falling to my death.

"*EXPLITIVE DELETED*"

Okay, think, think, think, think, think…what am I good at that could get me out of this? Ramen eating…no ramen here. Henge…I'd still weigh the same and fall so that's out. Kawaimi…nothing to swap places with. That leaves…Kage Bushin! Here's hoping this works, I use my left arm to grab my right and move it into position to say the name of my best jutsu.

"_Kage Bushin no Jutsu!" _I shout forcing as much chakra into the technique as I can possibly scrape together. I'm surrounded by a burst of smoke revealing half a dozen clones of myself within arms distance. "Sorry to do this guys but I need something to break my fall." Wordlessly, my copies maneuver themselves beneath me using a combo of grabbing onto one another and pointing their bodies straight down to speed up, ultimately forming a two clone thick layer wall to clutch onto which would hit the ground first.

"Thank you," I whisper as the first layer makes contact with the ground. Seems funny doesn't it? I mean thanking yourself for protecting yourself. But hey they have a few seconds difference in memory from me so…why abandon courtesy. The first layer of clones dispel instantly on contact with the jagged ground causing an unexpected reaction. Since they didn't dispel at once the second layer of clones shifted if just slightly before they too hit the ground and dispel. The end result of this is me landing on my already broken arm and breaking even more bones in my body somehow…I don't know things are kind of jumbled and disconnected. I must have cracked my skull if the look the clone above me had given….wait I was on top of the pile, so how can I remember…hey; I remember what my clone remembers.

"Great," I have to say out loud, just to confirm I can still talk. "I learn a cool side effects of my jutsu and its helping me remember being in even more pain." The rush of memories from all my crushed clones finally hits me in my already throbbing head and I black out from the pain. Although I must have been conscious enough to hallucinate because I could swear that metal ropes are touching me.

I don't know how much time has passed since I blacked out, but I do know that when you wake up unable to move due to restraints, you've probably been captured. Standard procedure dictates that you refrain from showing any signs of consciousness until you can ascertain: where you were, who was around you, whether they were friend or foe, and possible ways of escape. I was not one for standard procedure.

"Whoever the hell is out there let me out of this thing!" I shouted. The room I was in was very dark except for a light directly above my head which illuminated only a small section of the area, showing just that everything around me was made oddly enough of metal.

After a few moments of silence, I closed my eyes again to take stock of all the damage that had been done. I was brought out of my self inventory by the sound of two sets of footsteps walking toward me seconds before two men walked into the light.

The first man was fairly non-descript wearing just a light green polo shirt and grey slacks. His face was average looking with the only true difference from the norm being his brown hair cut in the flat-top style. His associate on the other hand was anything but average looking. The second man wore a green body suit with yellow boots, gloves, a belt and a chest plate. His eyes were covered by a dark pair of laboratory goggles in the style of sun glasses and his brown hair was cut in the style of a bowl cut. But the most noticeable about the man were the four tentacle-like arms which emerged from his back.

"Are we awake?" the second man asked with a slight accent, causing the 'w' to sound more live a 'v,'

"We're not sure. Do we…have metal arms in our back?"

"We do."

"Then we're awake…but we're very puzzled."

"Considering the circumstances I'm not surprised," the first man remarked. "But where are our manners. Allow me to introduce myself I am Alistair Smythe."

"And I," the second man stated, "am Doctor Otto Octavius, more crudely referred to as Doctor Octopus."

_Authors Note: How did Alistair Smythe and Doc Ock end up in Naruto's world? What will they do to him? Don't worry true believers (had to say it) all these questions will be answered in the next chapter._


	2. Chapter 2: Death of an Uzumaki

_Welcome back enjoyers of fine fan-fiction to Not Your Friendly Neighborhood Uzumaki. Last time, young Naruto was knocked into the chasm that was conveniently located near Konoha by Jiraiya of the Sannin. He entered his mindscape to force the Kyuubi to give him the chakra to escape, but that failed when the demon fox revealed that it wanted to die. And so our favorite __jinchūriki was forced to use the last of his power to use a shadow clone cushion to break his fall and knock him unconscious. He awakens to discover himself restrained and after a Blazing Saddles reference, kudos to those of you who got that reference, learns that he is in the presence of two of the Marvel Universes' best mechanical maestros Alistair Smythe and Doctor Otto Octavius, better known as Doctor Octopus. What will happen to the blond haired ninja, how did the villainous duo arrive in Naruto's world and __after reading past chapter 510 in canon Naruto, and ignore this if you haven't yet, but…does anybody else think that Kabuto is related to Dr. Kurt Conners? The first two questions will definitely be answered now in…_

**Chapter 2: Death of an Uzumaki**

"Why would they call you Doctor Octopus?" I had to ask out loud. "You only have six arms as far as I can tell…unless there's something different about your legs."

"One of my former enemies thought that combining my name with the tentacles would make a humorous jibe and the name stuck," Dr. Octavius replied.

"Not exactly the cleverest man was he?" I asked.

"As fascinating as this train of thought is," Alistair interrupted. "We have far more pressing concerns."

"Yes," Dr. Octavius replied. "First of all, I don't believe we caught your name."

"Naruto Uzumaki," I answered.

"Nice to meet you Mr. Uzumaki," Dr. Octavius returned. "We must admit we were not expecting somebody to come crashing down upon our base and surviving the impact."

"You can blame the pervert that pushed me off the cliff and the damn fox that wants to die."

"Fox?" Alistair asked. "And why exactly would anybody wish to kill a child?"

I retold my back-story to the usual duo, unsure how they would react, but by the end these two men were visually angered by the actions that led me to them.

"If only I could escape this metal box, I would show them such pain for harming a mere child!" Octavius raged.

"And to think we're the ones called super-villains," Alistair commented. "If that annoying wall crawler were here I think even he'd want to harm the citizens. Mr. Uzumaki…"

"Call me Naruto," I replied. "Mr. Uzumaki sounds odd."

"Very well Naruto, you may call me Alistair if you'd like." The master maker of robotics looked over toward his counterpart and looked at him for a moment.

"Fine," Octavius muttered annoyed, "he can call me Otto, but you're telling him what's happening."

"What is happening?" I asked. "I'm strapped to…whatever I'm strapped to, I can't feel much, and I think I'm supposed to be dead."

"I believe that this…Kyuubi was it…is inadvertently keeping you alive," Alistair answered. "When Otto found you, you were badly wounded and on the verge of death…truthfully, you did die for a few moments while we were trying to heal you."

"WHAT?" I raged. "I died…but how…shouldn't…"

"Calm yourself," Otto ordered. "There is no use is struggling with it at this moment. Alistair and I were able to revive you when your heart stopped; it was a fairly common medical procedure from our world."

"While your body has sustained a considerable amount of damage, we have managed to bring you back to consciousness with our machinery but we have reached a…how do I phrase this?" Alistair tried to explain, before an awkward pause filled the room.

"Mein gott, fine, I'll explain. We've never had a live specimen in our lab before, somebody who could help us understand what is causing this world to be so fundamentally different from our own. You see in our world, relatively few individuals have any sort of special ability…perhaps less than one percent, yet here…"

"Here," Alistair continued. "It's as if over half of your world's population is ninja as you've explained it. And somehow it's interfering with our technology."

"Perhaps this chakra or even the bijuu's chakra as you've explained it," Otto picked up, "is the reason why. Our ship and indeed we cannot move beyond the floor of this chasm."

"What do you mean, you can't move?" I asked. Both men looked at each other for a moment before Alistair let out a sigh.

"We are connected to the ship," Alistair explained. "Because we are not biological beings like yourself."

"What?"

"We are holograms or projections of light," Otto explained. "We only appear due to technology created by our late associate Quentin Beck also known as Mysterio."

"An unusual, yet dedicated man," Alistair added. "He died before his time."

"Regardless, Alistair and I began this project to act as…a time capsule of sorts."

"If you guys are holograms" I began, the foreign word sounding odd on my tongue, "How did you bring me in here?"

"We built a few small machines that are able to patrol the valley floor without being rendered inoperable." Alistair explained.

"Okay, so tell me more about this time capsule."

"Our world was changing, getting smaller." Otto explained. "Alistair and I were…abducted and transported to a strange world with the Lizard, Doctor Doom and the Red Skull by some entity called the Beyonder."

"I don't know who any of those names are."

"They were respectively: a Lizard monster, the ruler of a land that we didn't live in, a villain from our planet's Second World War, and I don't know what the Beyonder was either." Alistair explained. "We were on the world for a year; Skull, Otto, and Doom carved out territory to rule and I found myself working for the Red Skull."

"Until that blasted Doom took over my Octavia," Otto spat out angrily.

"Somehow one year later, Spiderman appeared on that world along side other heroes from our world and converted the Lizard to his side," Alistair continued ignoring Octavia's former leader. "We don't know how but we were both transported back to Earth a week or so after Spiderman's arrival and found that no time had passed on the Earth; however, the web slinger didn't return."

"Or perhaps he did, but we were launched before he did." Otto offered.

"So you guys are holograms of two super villains, who created a machine to hold a copy of your minds…so you could launch it into space? Why?"

"Without the web slinger, we thought that we could run rampant and take over New York," Alistair began.

"We were wrong," Otto continued. "Other heroes showed up to pick up the slack, some less…honorable than others."

"Iron Man, War Machine, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, even Dr. Strange made the occasional appearance," Alistair continued. "That lunatic the Punisher practically moved to New York to fight us in Spiderman's place."

"I think he was one of the key reasons we built the machine, his single mindedness would have had him hunting us until the end of time." Otto added. "We decided that with so many heroes, the odds of us going on to have children or even heirs to our legacies were practically non-existent."

"Scorpion was pretty close," Alistair commented.

"Mac Gargan, that irradiated, idle minded, imbecile?" Otto said incredulously. "Just what our world needed, moronic children that both spit acid & glow in the dark. Besides he couldn't get laid if he was an egg inside of a chicken."

"You never saw his girlfriend, they were very close."

"Uh, guys?" I interrupted. "Not that I mind listening to gossip sessions about people I don't know but can we get back to the story?"

"Right," Alistair said slightly embarrassed. "Otto and I managed to gather all of our fellow villains together and explained our plan and reasoning."

"While they did not believe us about the Secret War on another world," Otto began.

"Because it sounds so believable," I added sarcastically. Otto took no notice of my statement and continued on, "They did agree with the necessity of finding a way to preserve their legacy. And so we copied the technology of all of our associates along with various technologies from our world and loaded their schematics into our ship before launching it into space."

"We hoped for at least one of two results to occur," Alistair explained. "We hoped to either find Spiderman to destroy him once and for all or to find a worthy successor to all we had accomplished."

"Where do I fit into all of this?" I asked.

"Perhaps we could help each other Naruto," Otto said. "We have the technology to be a powerful force in the world; however, we lack a way to exist outside of this chasm."

"You on the other hand," Alistair continued, "Have been neglected and ill educated by those who reside in your village. If you agreed to participate in a procedure to have the powers and abilities that we possess incorporated into yourself, you could become a powerful fighter."

"And we," Otto concluded, "Could study yourself and this world to determine the best way for our machinery to work as well as having a worthy heir to our legacies."

"Are you sure you want me?" I asked after a few moments thought. "Your machinery is very complicated looking and I wasn't known as the dobe of my class because of my blond hair."

"Dobe?" both men asked.

"Idiot," I replied, honestly ashamed. It wasn't my fault, I know I heard everything they taught correctly but…just when I think I know the answers; they change the questions. Hey that doesn't sound too bad, I wonder if it's anybody's catchphrase.

"Your lack in intelligence can easily be remedied," Otto explained. "One of my previous inventions was the Neuro-Neutralizer Ray, which I used to temporarily turn Spiderman into my accomplice. Since that day, I continued to work on the device and eventually came up with additional modes. The first was a Neruo-Duplication Ray which I used to scan all of the minds associated with the technology we placed on board. Within our computer not only lie the minds of both Alistair Smythe and myself, but also the minds of the Vulture, Shocker, and many others."

"Sounds crowded," I joked.

"Like you wouldn't believe," Alistair replied. "Rhino's duplicate would not stop making 'Knock Knock' jokes."

"Such as?" I asked, as I had not heard one in a long time.

"I then," Otto continued, cutting Alistair and I off before either one of us could start telling 'Knock Knock' jokes, "continued to improve the device and turned it into a Neuro-Augmentation Ray, which will allow us to add memories rather than suppress or duplicate them. With some adjustments we could use it to transfer portions of our scientific knowledge and how our weapons work into you. You could become this world's finest scientific mind within a matter of hours!"

"Wouldn't that be taking the easy way out of learning?" I ask.

"Not really," Alistair explained. "Anyone can learn facts; it is applying them that is the true test of knowledge. You would only receive the facts and can repeat them, but learning the applications will be entirely up to you."

My mind raced through all of the possibilities, until finally only one answer came to mind. "I'll do it."

"Excellent," Alistair declared. "While Otto begins the transfer of knowledge, I shall begin inserting the clusters of nanites that will assist you in the control of your implants."

"Nanites? Implants? Clusters? I don't think I know what any of those things mean," I stated. Yeah, I know what you're thinking; he knows what exhibitionist means but not cluster? Well with all the perverts in Konoha you'd be surprised what words are used in everyday language around here.

"Nanites are tiny cell-sized machines that we have managed to make operational in this environment. Implants are…"

"I don't want breasts!" I shouted.

"…." Both men just stopped and stared at me for a moment, before surprisingly Otto started chuckling. "Isn't that what women put into their chests?" I asked.

"Wrong kind of implants," Alistair muttered. "The implants we're talking about are like Otto's extra arms."

"Oh," I answered. "Well I feel stupid."

"Do not feel ashamed," Otto chastised. "There is nothing wrong with being ignorant of the world, it is only wrong if you do not try to understand what you do not know on some level."

"Okay then," I began. "Start with Near-o-Activating-Thing!" Despite my enthusiasm, I could tell that Otto was slightly annoyed that I had apparently called his ray by the wrong name, but he smiled none the less. Neither man said a word as a metal headband surrounded my head and clamped down tightly onto it.

"This may hurt a bit," Alistair offered as some type of screen activated to my side displaying an empty bar. "We've got a lot to download and we can only hope your system doesn't crash again." Before I could ask what he was talking about, it felt as if a thousand nails were driven through my skull simultaneously and I shouted in pain.

"Sorry," Otto began. "But direct neural stimulation produces the best results."

My world suddenly exploded in a blinding flash of white light before I was overwhelmed with facts, figures, and faces.

"_The length of the hypotenuse is derived from the square root of the sum of the squares of the other two sides."_

"_Acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared."_

"_Increasing the speed of a fluid decreases its pressure, the air moving over a wing is faster and therefore has less pressure than the air underneathe which leads to lift." _

I saw a grey haired man smile down at me before he picked me up and hugged me saying, _"My son, I love you so much, you will do many great things." _Then I blacked out.

Blacking out is not fun. The world disappears around you and then suddenly restarts without any warning or explanation.

"Naruto? Naruto? Are you awake?" I heard somebody say…who's…right I'm Naruto and I just had a bunch of knowledge jammed into my head. And that was…Alistair talking to me. I opened my eyes and saw Alistair and Otto looking down at me…they must have moved the table to a horizontal plane.

"I have indeed regained consciousness, it feels as if my cranial plate has been buffeted by an unnecessarily numerous quantity of pachyderm. However, my synaptic pathways appear to be functioning at an increased velocity relative to my status prior to your augmentation." I paused, letting what I had just said process. "What did I just say?"

"Your head hurts but your brain is running better than before," Alistair translated. "It will take a little while longer for all the information to be processed."

"Who was the gentleman?" I asked.

"What gentleman?" Otto asked back.

"The grey haired man who hugged me and told me he loved me." I answered.

"That was my father Spencer Smythe," Alistair admitted. "I thought that perhaps a few additional memories of being loved would be beneficial to you."

"You always were the most sentimental of our group," Otto commented smirking.

"Is that a bad thing?" I asked.

"As long as sentimentality does not prevent you from doing what must be done, no it is not" Otto explained. Before we could continue the line of discussion, my head throbbed again.

"How long was I out?"

"A few hours," Alistair responded. "While the accumulation of information was a success, I'm sorry to say the nanites are having a difficult time accumulating in your body. For some reason your chakra changes consistency around the nanites & attacks them."

"Must be the furball," I reasoned, "It seems so intent on dying that it will refuse me any chance of living if it can."

"Why should the beast have any say," Otto stated angrily. "It is a monster that was placed inside of you by another monster. You are its controller; therefore, it should serve you. If it will not give you its power, then you must take it."

"I agree," Alistair said. "If you could harness the demon's power then potentially our technology could be powered by the beast's energy and thereby granting you greater control."

"So you think I should go confront the Kyuubi again?" I paused after asking, a part of me actually dreading their response.

"Unfortunately, you must face your demon," Alistair explained.

"I hate sounding weak but…is there a way you two could come in with me?" Maybe it was the child I was never truly allowed to be inside me, or that coward in me who didn't want to go toward the monster alone, but all I knew was that deep down I was scared of the beast below.

"Is it possible?" Alistair asked Otto. Otto looked toward the ceiling with one of his hands on his chin, pondering the idea.

"In theory," Otto began. "If we incorporated a dynamic scanning function and used it to transmit ourselves" Otto paused to think some more. "I am not entirely sure how the 'mindscape' function would work; I suppose that it would be entirely up to Naruto to create it.

"So I guess I'll try and find the cage again." I closed my eyes, on purpose for the first time in a while and willed myself back into the sewer. After a few minutes of this I was feeling pretty sil…

_DRIP_

…ly. I reopened my eyes and found myself back in the sewers. I've got to admit, I did not think that would work.

"Hello? Otto? Alistair? Anybody out here?" I started wandering through the sewer tunnels of my mind…I must really have issues if my mind is a sewer. After a few minutes of wandering I finally ran into my benefactors…

"Oof!"

"Ouch!"

…literally. "Sorry," I apologized. Then I noticed who I had run into, the first was definitely Otto but the second one, I wasn't sure. He was a very muscular man with pale-greyish skin, yellow eyes, fin-like growths coming out of his forearms, metal-grey legs with a few fin growths ending in talons, but most distinctive on this guy were the two curved…growths in the middle of his shoulders.

"I see you've noticed the change," the grey man jokes smiling down at me with a voice that sounds remarkably like…

"Alistair?" I asked. He nodded. "What happened to you?"

"I apologize for not informing you of this sooner. Up until now you have only seen my human self, one who could actually walk. When I worked for the Kingpin, I failed to prevent his son from going to prison. As punishment he had that freak, Herbert Landon turn me into this, the Ultimate Spider Slayer. Ultimately, I rebelled once I learned that Kingpin was holding my father in suspended animation." Alistair explained.

"So why do you look like this now?" I asked.

"If there is a demon in your mind," Alistair began, "I think that you would want some extra muscle on your side if we have to fight it."

"Thank you," I gratefully said. "It's nice to have somebody to help me here."

"Ja, ja," Otto agreed. "Now can we stop the gratitude party and go find this demon?" The three of us started walking through the tunnels, not really understanding why my mind was a sewer.

"You must have issues," Otto offered at one point. Eventually we found ourselves staring at the bars that separated me from the burden that damn Fourth Hokage placed on me. Wait, where did that come from? I always liked the Fourth, didn't I? Well I respected him for beating the Kyuubi, but then I found that he stuck it in me. People hated me for that and he's the reason I'm hated, but he didn't intend for that to happen right? But still intentions or not you are responsible for your actions so…

"How can you be lost in thought in your own mind?" Otto asked. "We are here to confront you demon."

"Right," I replied and began mustering up all of my courage. "Kyuubi! Get your furry behind out here right now!" There was silence for a moment before the nine tailed fox showed his face.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite Naruto and he's brought friends, what's the occasion?" Kyuubi asked mockingly. "Have you come to celebrate your death? Because that's a real good reason to party?"

"Not exactly the wittiest of creatures is it?" Alistair commented not blinking in the face of the demon.

"Kyuubi" I ordered. "I am your container and I demand that you stop preventing these two from healing me and hand over your power."

"So these are the ones who refuse to let you and I die," Kyuubi said pensively. "I don't like you humans denying me my eternal peace. Now get out of here!" Four red tendrils like the one that attacked me last time passed through the bars all headed towards me. Before they could touch me however, Otto lashed out with his four metal tentacles knocking the red things away. Alistair let loose with laser blasts from the growths on his shoulders, striking the dazed tendrils and pushing them further back.

"This is your mind and that is your prisoner," Alistair stated as he narrowly dodged a horizontal swipe by jumping off of one of the walls letting the tendril collide with it. "You are the master here, so stop that demon with your will!"

"You're right," I said, realization striking me. "I am the master, this is my world, and I define it!" I roared out the last few words causing the room to start shaking violently. The brick walls and ceiling came tumbling down, the tendrils froze before being forced back into the cage, and the water dried up.

"That's it Naruto," Otto encouraged, "Show the demon who's boss."

The floor became a mixture of stainless steel with the occasional carpet for pleasing aesthetics. The walls shifted from brick to light blue metal in the style of half circles reaching from the floor up to the ceiling. Computers rose up in sections of the new mindscape and directly behind Naruto rose a half circular desk made of a rich dark green stone complete with computers on top of it and a throne like chair in the center.

"Incredible," Alistair said in wonder. "It looks exactly like…"

"Crime Central" Otto finished. "Memories of this location must have slipped in somehow."

I was only partially aware of the amazement my benefactors were in as I focused more and more on the Kyuubi. The cage bars shifted becoming a clear glass sphere which began collapsing on the Kyuubi until the fox barely had any room. I let all the anger and wrath that I felt boil up to the surface and stared into the eyes of the bane of my existence.

"Now you listen to me, mighty demon" I said sarcastically. "I tried to be nice and I tried to only use your power in emergencies, but you denied my request and instead tried to kill me. Well guess what, it worked, Naruto Uzumaki is dead. I'm his replacement and successor and the heir of Otto Octavius, Alistair Smythe, and an array of others I have yet to meet, and I'll be damned before I lose to you. If you won't give me your power demon…then I will take it!" The former pipes of the sewers shrunk and changed until they became electrical cables that passed through the sphere and pierced Kyuubi's hide. The demon fox roared in pain at each stab. Seconds after insertion, red energy was pulled out of the Kyuubi and once it hit the sphere, the color changed into blue before fading into the wires and presumably entering my body.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" I taunted relishing the beast's pain to a degree even I was scared by.

"Go ahead," Kyuubi said weakly, voice hoarse with the yelling it had done. "Kill me."

"Oh my dear demon," I mocked. "You seem to forget," I lifted my right hand up palm upward. "There are fates worse than death." As I said the last word, I closed my fist and drew it back to me quickly. Simultaneously, the largest wire fell from the ceiling and pierced the junction between Kyuubi's skull and neck. The demon that caused so much pain and destruction to Konoha let out the loudest pained scream yet and collapsed, wires pierced into random sections of its hide, and its eyes once so full of malevolence, dulling.

"I don't know how mind and soul are connected," I began looking down at the skewered fox, "but I do know this. Right now, I am severing your higher brain functions from the rest of your body, much like one would do to a frog or better a toad if you wished to dissect it and see the parts still functioning. Pith, I believe the name of the process. Either way, the process combined with your power should mean that your body will remain alive for a long while with your mind little more than a vegetable, perhaps this will mean your soul will pass on. Isn't that great?" I asked, mimicking Kyuubi's earlier mocking tone. "We both get what we wanted. But before you go Kyuubi, do me a favor would you?" When you see the shinigami, tell it that when I stand before him to be ready to regurgitate the Fourth Hokage's soul, Naruto Octavius-Smythe is going to be taking a pound out of the bastard's spiritual flesh."

The demon's eyes closed, hopefully for the last time, and I felt a hand on each of my shoulders. All of the anger, the wrath, the fury, all of it that the Kyuubi rose in me suddenly fell away to be replaced by shock.

"What did I do?" I asked.

"What had to be done," Otto explained, his voice tender and sympathetic. "You did nothing more than put a rabid animal out of your misery."

"Killing is never easy," Alistair added also sympathetically. "We try to avoid it whenever possible, but ultimately in our line of work it's unavoidable. The best thing you can do is not dwell on it and move on with your life." Alistair smiled, "Now what's with you calling yourself Octavius-Smythe?"

"Well you said I was your heir," I began, panicking at the thought of their rejection. "So that's like a son, so I thought it'd be okay if I used your last names now."

The two men looked at each other and smiled.

"Yes, I think that would be just fine," Otto said happily.

"I have no problems with that," Alistair agreed and then pointed his thumb at Otto, "But why does he get top billing?"

"Well his last name ends with 'S' and yours starts with it, so it sounds like one flowing word." I explained.

"Makes sense," both men agreed. My eyelids suddenly felt heavy and my shoulders slumped as the events of the day washed over me.

"And now its time for you to sleep," Alistair commanded.

"All right," I said offering no argument. "Goodnight…fathers." And with that the world darkened once more as I let sleep finally take me.

_(We now shift to 3__rd__ person view because Naruto is asleep and this stuff is important.)_

Alistair Smythe and Otto Octavius rematerialized in their lab/ship/time capsule and looked down at their sleeping son.

"He looks so peaceful for one who has lived such a troubled life," Alistair commented. "It amazes me how powerful he is and how he hasn't gone mad with power yet."

"Yes, I think we did well in choosing an heir." Otto replied. "I am curious though, while Naruto was changing the sewer into Crime Central in his mindscape and attacking the demon, did your sensors detect anything?"

"Yes," Smythe replied looking at Otto, "When the cage was warping, my sensors detected two separate brainwaves attempting to manifest themselves."

"Why do you suppose they were going to do?"

"Most likely the two other presences were trying to make themselves known to prevent his efforts." Smythe replied.

"That seems entirely possible, did you destroy them?" The famed Dr. Octopus asked.

"No, I was intrigued as to how they were able to do that without our level of technology and what they were going to say, so I have had their consciousnesses transferred to a sub-directory for analysis to determine who they are. Do you think we should tell Naruto?" The master of robotics questioned his ally.

"In time," Otto replied, "He's had a very full day and has been burdened by much; let us wait until things calm down before we inform him. Besides, he'll be too busy adapting to the implants & training to really care."

"This has been an eventful evening," Alistair commented smiling at Naruto again. "So what are we going to do tomorrow night?"

"The same thing we're going to do every night Alistair," Otto explained. "Help Naruto take over the world."

_What powers and abilites will Naruto gain? How will he fair against Neji Hyuuga and the others in the upcoming Chunin Exams? What references will I make in the next chapter to things that are definitely not Spiderman related? Until next time, fiction readers!_

_Authors Notes:_

_Thanks to all of you who have read the story thus far, over 700 hits, this is definitely becoming one of my more popular works. Also thanks to number 14-daxlyn, The Elemental Dragon Emperor, Ninja bat master, Zaralann, Nobody Foot Soldier, and Jaraiya's apprentice for their reviews. If you haven't already, I've got another fic called Naruto: Chikagami: The Blood's Mirror, that you should take a look at._

_Mein gott translates to "My God."_

_For those of you confused by the events Otto and Alistair described, I suggest watching Spiderman: The Animated Series from the 1990's as I'm using that as the basis for the Spiderman half of the story._

_I trust most of you got the final reference I made, albeit tweaked, but I've got one more hidden in there. I've made a wrestling reference this time by changing one of a famous signature lines, care to tell me who I'm referencing?_

_And now just for the extra laugh based off of a scraped idea, here's an Omake for you all to enjoy:_

_Omake: Wrong File Alistair_

My world suddenly exploded in a blinding flash of white light before I was overwhelmed with facts, figures, and faces.

"_Interplanet Janet she's a galaxy girl, a solar system miss from a future world."_

**"_Conjunction Junction, what's your function? _**_Hooking up words and phrases and clauses."_

"_Oh, elbow room, elbow room, Got to, got to get us some elbow room."_

"Naruto? Naruto? Are you awake?" I heard somebody say. I opened my eyes and saw Alistair and Otto looking down at me. I looked at the former super villain duo and said the first thing that came to mind. "I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill. And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill."

"Dummkopf (dummy)" Otto yelled at Alistair. "You downloaded Schoolhouse Rock into the boy!"

"Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here."


	3. Chapter 3: I Know Why the Caged Bird

_Greetings Merry Makers to Chapter 3 of Not Your Friendly Neighborhood Uzumaki! Well it's December 25, 2010 as I post this so Merry Christmas! This chapter marks the first ever fight scene I've ever written…well without a trading card game involved, but let me know how I do. Anyway thanks to all of you who reviewed, don't worry I don't intend to quit writing although with my perfectionist tendencies (and those of my betas) it may take a while to write a chapter that is at the very least "satisfactory." Anyway, while I have a moment a few quick notes to a trio who wrote something outside of the general trend._

_**Yoyolord: I'm trying 3**__**rd**__** person for the bulk of this chapter, we'll see how long that trend holds. Personally, I like writing some sections in first person because it lets you see Naruto's thinking process much easier.**_

_**Ninja bat master: I hope your muse comes back as your works show that you have a great range of ideas that you can write on. Although, I think I have an idea where you left it…in my head while you were rummaging for what I'm doing in the future. Both girls will play a role in the future definitely, but we'll see what happens.**_

_**Katonus: First of all, thanks for the great review. It was deep, insightful, and attacked my mind a bit. The simplest way for me to explain my thought process on why Otto and Alistair are doing what they're doing is this. They call themselves villains for the same reason that any group would take what another group would use as an insult and use it proudly. They call themselves "villains" because that is what the outside world calls them, except the outside world is using it angrily but they use it sarcastically. There's a few missing pieces to their past that I hope to cover in future that will explain their motives better, but let me ask you this: If you created something, wouldn't you want somebody to take care of it for you when you're gone? Given their villain status, it would be unlikely for Otto or Smythe to have kids so they cooked up the time capsule as their way of leaving their creations to a future caretaker. Hope that answers some questions.**_

_So thanks to all for reviewing, favorite-ing, etc. and I hope that you all enjoy:_

**Chapter 3: I Know Why the Caged Bird Fights**

_(I own neither Naruto nor Spiderman nor the related stuff…minus the issues or manga I bought.)_

Two weeks, you can do a lot in two weeks time. You can read at least one good book, repaint a couple rooms of a house, watch all the episodes of just about any TV series that has been made, or not learn how to summon toads and be thrown off of a cliff. I'd advice against that last one. The second two weeks of my training were far more productive, filled with day after day of healing and upgrading my body so that I would be able to use all of the powers that my fathers' ship held within its computer banks.

The Chunin Exams were set to begin in a few hours and I took the opportunity to look myself over in one of the base's reflective surfaces, to make sure everything was in place before I left for the exams. Admittedly, I have not yet come close to utilizing the full array of abilities that Alistair had stated were contained within their machinery, but that wasn't for lack of trying. What can I say, I'm young and impatient. I wanted all of new powers right away, I wanted the metal arms, the acid spitting tail, the wings to fly with…the youth absorbing gauntlets I didn't necessarily need but, hey it would definitely be fun to suck up Kakashi's youth and find out if his hair was really silver or if he's going grey.

Anyway, I met with all of the individuals whose minds had been scanned into the time capsule and with their help along with my fathers', we determined a short list of individual powers that would be given to me before the Chunin Exam, as well as being given the beginning treatments to allow the transference of additional genetic patters to occur without changing my original DNA. This, Alistair explained to me, was the greatest contribution to genetics that Herbert Landon had made, the ability to turn on and off abilities given to a subject while leaving the subjects original appearance unchanged. Landon had created the process while working on a formula based on the one that had created some famous superhero from my fathers' world…Commander…Major…Captain that's it…Captain America and his Super Soldier Serum.

Alistair seemed adamant that I receive this treatment first so that, I suspect, I would not be forcibly changed into something that could not walk freely among people. Even if he always appeared in his human form around me, I could tell that father hated the fact that the only way he could walk was by being transformed into a weapon.

"Let me save you some trouble," Alistair started saying as his holographic self formed behind me. "You look good, I'm sure that your new look and physique will have all of those hormone crazed women in the stands will be eying you like a piece of meat and wet with lust."

"You mean because they'll be drooling so much?" I asked with a smirk.

"Sure," Alistair replied dryly. "Let's go with that." He didn't say anything else, he just watched me finish getting ready.

"Save the image to your hard drive, it'll last longer." I joked turning to face my forcibly mutated father.

"Sorry," he replied slightly embarrassed sounding. "I guess it's just…I don't feel comfortable with you going off to fight in this silly tournament where you could get seriously hurt."

"I have said it before and I'll say it again," a voice that I now knew had a German accent. "Smythe, you are the most sentimental of all of us." My other father, Otto Octavius the man who was a pioneer in robotics controlled by the human mind, walked into the room. "Do you not have faith in our work? Do you not have faith in those whose minds have helped train Naruto? I have complete faith that Naruto could crush any of those mere ninja he is to fight using only my arms, the other abilities are just there in case."

"I know," Alistair replied. "I'd rather not see him get hurt."

"Neither would I," Otto agreed. "But I would rather be proud and declare his victory rather than outwardly display my concern."

"Naruto has only been training for a couple weeks; it took you months of work to make your arms capable of the delicate movements necessary to performing your experiments."

"But he was also given copies of all my memories of using my arms and could thus build upon my skills and can now use them as well as I could." Otto countered back.

"Naruto would like to know if Naruto has left and if this is the reason that he is being referred to as if he is not in the room," I said before my fathers could get too caught up in their argument.

"Sorry," both men apologized/muttered.

"As much as I'd love to watch you two fight again, the exam is going to start in a couple hours and I need to get going. Auf Wiedersehen Väter," I said cheerfully as I walked out the nearest door to the outside.

(3rd person)

"Our son's growing up," Otto commented sadly. "Seems like only yesterday he came crashing onto our roof."

"It was yesterday, but if you're talking about the first time it was two weeks ago and he came to us as a teenager already." Alistair replied.

"Ja, but a teenager that had already gone through too much."

"Come on," the flat-top cut man said in a happier tone of voice than before. "Let's go to the communication center and in five minutes we can bother Naruto when he exits the chasm."

"Better make it seven," Otto replied, "It rained last night, might make the going tougher."

"Alright," Alistair said as the duo turned away from the door and began walking to the control room, a few seconds later he added with a teasing undertone. "I still can't believe you taught Naruto _German_ of all things."

"You have a problem with German?" Otto asked, his German accent thicker than usual.

"I like German beer," Alistair replied after a few seconds thought.

"You're all right Smythe."

Of all the events that the five Great Shinobi Nations could undergo, the Chunin Exams were perhaps the greatest double edged sword. For all of the nations, the ninja that they sent would essentially represent the strength of a nation. The more ninja that advanced, the more likely clients would send missions to you; unfortunately, the inverse was also true, nations that had poor showings at the Chunin Exams typically had a drop in mission requests until the next time the nation did well in the exams.

For the hosting nation, the Chunin exams often brought in more money than a dozen A-rank missions; however, this money was the hardest earned out of all missions. Scheduling when and where the first rounds of the test were to occur, coordinating with the foreign nations as to how many genin were being sent, coordinating with foreign dignitaries as to where they'll be staying, and positioning ANBU members in locations through out the city due to the necessity for increased security for in protecting the potential clients and watching the teams from the other nations to prevent them from stealing national secrets among a few dozen other tasks.

For Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage, the much praised "God of the Shinobi" this was the worst Chunin Exam ever. First, on the first day of the exams, his secretary made a mistake with his breakfast order and ordered cinnamon rolls with raisins in them, Sarutobi hated raisins. Second, Suna sent an insane jinchuriki as a member of their entry team, it had taken some work to learn this and Sarutobi was not pleased that an individual who wielded the power of a bijuu and loved to kill people was walking through his village. Third, Orochimaru had revealed himself & interfered in the exams putting a Curse Seal on Sasuke, Sarutobi hated Curse Seals…except Anko's since it gave him a chance to see more of the purple haired jonin's body than she usually showed.

But the final straw came at the hands of his favorite student, Jiraiya, the Toad Sannin, writer of the world famous number one best selling _Icha Icha _series, and holder of Konoha's secret record of most times hit by a woman outside of a training scenario in a single day, 4380, although many called for an asterisk put by that as Tsunade was responsible for at least 45 of those hits.

(Flashback)

It had been two weeks since Jiraiya took over Naruto's training from Ebisu and Sarutobi had ordered Jiraiya to report with a status update on Naruto's training. Sarutobi knew the instant that Jiraiya walked into the room smiling that something was wrong; Jiraiya's smile was fake.

"What happened?" the aged Hokage asked his former student.

"Nothing," Jiraiya replied quickly. "Got some great research in, it should make the next book a hit!"

"And I trust that Naruto has been training rather than assisting you in your research?"

"Oh yeah, the kid has been training hard every day, exhausts himself, I can see a lot of my old apprentice in him, yeah."

"And where is Naruto?"

"You don't know? Oh, well he's….um…at home?" Jiraiya offered weakly.

"Jiraiya. Where is Naruto?" Sarutobi growled.

"I don't know," the Toad Sannin admitted. "We were training, I turned my back and…he disappeared."

"Disappeared!" Sarutobi roared. "How can you lose a blond haired, orange wearing, ramen loving teenager?"

"Well we were training near that waterfall all the civilian girls love going to and I was making some notes and then it got quiet and when I turned around he was gone."

Sarutobi sighed and rubbed his forehead. "One day, you couldn't put off your research one day and focus more on Naruto?"

"He was practicing how to summon, there's not much you can do but repeat it over and over again so you can practice the hand signs, build a connection with the animal on the scroll and build up the chakra reserves by draining them through the summoning process." Jiraiya explained.

"I know that," the sensei snapped at his former student. "I'm the one who taught it to you. That still doesn't excuse you from ignoring Naruto."

"Relax sensei," Jiraiya replied, his voice full of confidence. "How much trouble could the kid have gotten into?"

"You had better hope that he is all right Jiraiya or so help me…" Sarutobi's threat was cut off as a cloud of smoke burst in between the two ninja. The smoke cleared to reveal that a toad had summoned itself into the room, but not just any toad. This was one of the most important toads. This toad was the only toad with eyebrows and a beard; this was Fukasaku, the Pa Toad.

"Pa?" Jiraiya said surprised. "Have you found Naruto?"

"Jiraiya," Fukasaku answered solemnly. "It's no use, the only toads that Naruto summoned were all too young to be of any help, and there's something else…" Fukasaku fell silent searching for the words.

"What?" both Sarutobi and Jiraiya asked.

"His name," Fukasaku began hesitantly, "on our copy of the scroll, his name has gone black. You know what that means."

"No," Jiraiya said in shock. "It can't be true, Pa, you must have seen it wrong. Naruto can't be…"

"Dead," Sarutobi finished in disbelief his head bowing to the ground. "Naruto is dead."

"Sensei, I'm sorry, I…"

"Get out." Sarutobi cut him off in the same tone of voice that once halted three companies of Iwa ninja. "Get out of my sight before I say something we'll both regret and pray that Kami is kind and Fukasaku's scroll is faulty."

"But sensei I could…"

"NOW!" Sarutobi roared, smashing his fist on the desktop causing it to crack upon impact. Jiraiya ran out of the room faster than he ran away from any female who sought to do him harm, and Fukasaku vanished in a puff of smoke. With nobody else in the room, Sarutobi finally felt his age and fell backward into his chair. The aged leader started crying, just as he had when his wife had died many years ago, and then he started praying to every deity he had ever heard of to bring back his surrogate grandson.

(End Flashback)

Sarutobi had not slept well that night, or any night since then. For the past two weeks the Third Hokage had been playing a game of misdirection, keeping the few interested parties in Naruto believing he was out of the village training. But now reality had come crashing in. Naruto's name would be called, he wouldn't show up, and after the conclusion of the tournament Sarutobi would have the task of announcing that the boy was missing or had died. It broke his heart that most of the people in the village might actually cheer the news. 'Maybe now was the time to retire,' Sarutobi mused to himself. 'I'm getting too old for this crap.'

But before the aged leader had a chance to wallow too deeply in his sadness, his thoughts were brought back to the present by the arrival of his Suna counterpart.

"Lord Kazekage," Sarutobi greeted. "You must be tired from your long journey."

"Not at all, it was a good thing that it was held here this time." The Kazekage replied politely. "But the trip would have been too much for a man of your years Lord Hokage. Perhaps its time for you to choose a Fifth Hokage."

"Thank you for the concern," Sarutobi replied politely. "Perhaps one of the genin today will prove to be a worthy successor. But now I believe its time to begin the festivities." The famed Third Hokage rose to his feet and walked forward to the railing of the Kage's box to address all those assembled. "Thank you everybody for coming to the Hidden Leaf's Chunin Exam! We will now start the main tournament matches between the eight participants who made it through the preliminaries! Please stay and watch all of the battles until the end! Thank you and let the battles begin!"

"An excellent speech Lord Hokage," the Kazekage complimented. "However, I believe you should have counted the contestants before giving it. There seems to be a couple competitors missing from the proceedings."

"I'm sure they will be here soon," Sarutobi simply replied, before mentally adding, 'Naruto, please do the impossible again and be alive.'

Six of the Chunin hopefuls stood in a line facing one of Konoha's Tokubetsu Jonin, Genma Shiranui, a long brown haired man with a backwards forehead protector and a senbon needle in his mouth.

"Before we begin," Genma explained. "There's been a change in the pairings. Dosu Kinuta of Otogakure has been removed, note the new match ups and prepare to battle when called upon." The six Genin looked at the paper to see that very little had really changed. "Now then let the matches proceed, first match Neji Hyuga vs. Naruto Uzumaki, all other contestants please leave the battleground."

As five of the six Genin present walked up the stairs, the mutterings of the crowd grew louder.

"That blond punk's gonna get his ass handed to him."

"His luck's run out."

"Against the Hyuga that demon's got no chance."

"Ugh, I should not have eaten that case of beans." Needless to say, the seats around the man who said that cleared out quickly.

"This is the last call for Neji Hyuga vs. Naruto…" Genma was cut off as the door leading from the outside directly to the arena floor burst open. Through the opened door strode a teen that would look almost at home among the Aburame clan in his tan trench coat and sunglasses, although the blond hair in the style of a buzz cut was not common to any of their members.

"My apologies for being tardy," the teen began taking off his sun glasses to show his bright blue eyes before tucking them in an inner coat pocket. "But I am here now and ready to go." He finished his statement by removing his trench coat with a flourish throwing it onto a nearby tree branch.

"Naruto?" Genma asked the blond.

"In the flesh," Naruto replied. To Sarutobi, Genma, and pretty much everybody in the stands, the Naruto they were looking at must have hit a major growth spurt. In the place of the short, loud-mouthed, emotional blond in a bright orange jumpsuit everybody was expecting, stood a taller, relatively calm blond in a dark black body suit with dark orange boots, gloves, and chest plate. _(Think Doc Ock's attire but in Naruto's Shippuden color scheme.)_ However, what was the most strikingly different was how buff the new Naruto was with larger muscles in his arms and a six-pack clearly visible in his abdomen. As predicted, many of the teenage girls started becoming wet at Naruto's Adonis-like physique…because they were drooling excessively.

"Now then shall we fight?" Naruto asked slipping into a loose fighting stance, i.e. fists raised and feet slightly spread apart. "I am eager to defeat you Neji."

'His eyes,' Neji thought as he activated his Byakugan and slipped into the Jyuken stance, 'they're the eyes of a confident man, a person who has no doubt in himself.' "It will be fun to watch you fall apart when you discover reality," Neji taunted out loud, his left palm forward and his right arm bent and at his side.

"Ready. Fight!" Genma instructed getting out of the way of the two combatants. Neither party moved for the first few seconds as they stared at the other, white eyes in anger and blue in confident indifference.

"Too scared to move?" Neji taunted, hoping to get a rise from the normally easily angered blond.

"Nope," Naruto replied happily. "Just being polite and letting you have the first move." Neji did not reply and stood still keeping his Byakugan eyes focused on his opponent noticing the increased amount of chakra that Naruto had around his back. Again neither side moved or spoke; this continued on for several minutes, the crowd mistaking Naruto's inaction for fear. "All right, I'm bored now." Naruto suddenly said breaking the hush. "If you're not going to attack, I will."

The blond shinobi rushed forward, arms ready to throw a punch. As soon as he got close enough, Naruto threw a standard straightforward right punch. Neji barely dodged the punch to conserve his energy and position and countered with a palm thrust. Naruto countered this attack by deflecting it downward with his opposite arm and using his momentum to quickly bring his left leg around which Neji blocked with his opposite arm. Both competitors jumped backward creating space between them after the brief exchange.

"Not a bad way to start," Naruto joked. "But I'm still waiting to see you show off your much vaulted taijutsu style." This time Neji charged forward and engaged Naruto in pure hand to hand combat. To the civilians in the crowd, the two ninja moved fast enough to appear as if they had a dozen hands each blocking or attacking one of their opponents' hands. But as in many fights, experience proved invaluable, as despite Naruto's best efforts Neji found a brief opening in Naruto's defenses. The Hyuga prodigy took advantage and connected with a Jyuken strike to Naruto's rib cage, causing Naruto to momentarily stop. Neji pressed his advantage striking Naruto's right shoulder and left lung with enough force to knock Naruto back and down onto his back.

"While it won't kill you," Neji explained to his downed opponent, "My Jyuken has connected with your left bronchi making you unable to breathe properly without medical treatment. You should accept your fate and forfeit." Naruto said nothing and breathed deeply, almost wheezing holding his right hand where Neji had struck him.

"Pathetic," Neji taunted. "Proctor, he is obviously defeated, please end this fight." Genma looked at Naruto briefly before answering, "He is still able to fight." Neji opened his mouth to reply but before he could say anything the ground behind him burst and a metal rope wrapped around Neji's waist and threw him backward with enough force to put a quarter of the arena's distance between the fighters. As Neji landed on his feet and watched, the ground around Naruto shattered as three more metal ropes rose from the ground all bearing three pronged claws. To the crowd's shock, Naruto's body also rose from the ground to reveal that the four metal structures sprang from Naruto's back. As Naruto's body tilted forward and he regained his footing, the lower right arm gently dusted Naruto's back off.

"Thank you Number 6, I'm fine. That actually tingled." Naruto said, his voice not showing any signs of the wheezing he was doing earlier. "I was only acting like it hurt so you six would have time to get underground."

"What are those?" Neji asked.

"Take your pick," Naruto replied. "A legacy I've inherited, a gift from a loving father, or if it makes you feel any better I suppose you could call them fate's weapon against you." With these final two words Naruto charged forward, faster than before. Neji brought his arms up in time to block the punches from Naruto's flesh arms but caught one of Naruto's tentacles balled up in a fist to his left cheek sending him back into the path of another tentacle that caught him in the gut. This set up a chain of cause and effect where one tentacle would strike Neji in his arm, leg, head, chest, and/or back which would cause him to fly off in a different direction and into the path of yet another tentacle.

"How is he doing this?" Kiba asked out loud. "What kind of weapon is that?"

"N-N-Naruto," Hinata stuttered in surprise as her crush was attacking her cousin in a way nobody had ever done before.

After a minute of this Naruto caught Neji with two arms and squeezed.

"I suggest you concede defeat before I'm forced to break your bones," Naruto said seriously, emphasizing his point by pulling his arms tighter.

"Never," Neji groaned. Naruto said nothing and tightened his grip further until a SNAP filled the air and Neji exploded in a cloud of smoke to be replaced by a log.

"Well, well, well, looks like I was wrong. You do know something other than Jyuken. I forgot unless you're just an awesome shinobi like Lee or I, you have to know three specific jutsu." Naruto taunted as his eyes swept the field for his missing opponent. "Although I must say, having to actually use one, hardly Hyuga family style."

Neji's reply was to appear from behind one of the arena's trees looking battered but still able to fight.

"And what do you know of the Hyuga family style?" Neji asked.

"Only that all of the members of your clan that I've seen only seem to be able to do three things: one, use their fancy taijutsu style, two, walk around with a ten foot poll shoved up their ass, and three, flaunt the eyes that every pervert in the world would give anything to have." Naruto joked.

"You dare mock the Byakugan?" Neji seethed.

"Only because I'm positive you either lack a sex drive entirely or you use it to look under women's clothing whenever you want." Naruto replied casually. "So unless you've got something else you'd like to share with the group…"

"You mock a clan you do not understand. You do not know of our clan's destiny of hatred."

"Enlighten me."

"The main family of the Hyuga clan has a technique that has been passed through the line, a cursed seal." Neji reached up and untied the knot on his hitai-ate revealing the hooked swastika on his forehead. "This is the Hyuga clan's Caged Bird seal, a symbol of forced servitude. I was branded with this when Hinata turned three."

"So the reason you tried to kill her is because they tattooed you against your will?" Naruto asked in a confused tone.

"The seal does so much more, with a gesture any member of the Main Clan can torture any branch member or destroy their mind killing them, sealing the Byakugan in the process." Neji explained seriously before adding as an afterthought, "The ultimate protection."

"There is no monster greater than man," Naruto whispered loud enough for Neji and the ignored Genma to hear.

"Yes, this protection was used by the Main Branch when they killed my father," Neji explained, the anger rolling off of him. What little noise remained in the crowd was hushed in an instant as this secret was revealed. "One night, Hinata was abducted, but Hiashi killed the abductor before he could get too far. Who do you suppose the abductor was revealed to be?"

"Somebody important I'd bet."

"Kumo's ambassador." Neji replied. "Kumo raged that Konoha had violated their recent peace treaty. Tension mounted, war seemed inevitable and then a deal was struck. Kumo wanted Hiashi corpse, and the village agreed." Naruto looked out of the corner of his eye to where the Hyuga clan head was sitting, actually looking ashamed, "He looks pretty healthy for a corpse."

"The Main Branch killed my father, Hiashi's twin brother to protect their precious clan head. Because of a few seconds difference between their births, my father was fated to die to protect the Main Branch. Like you, despite you new weapons, are fated to be defeated here and now."

"Fatalism does not become you Hyuga," Naruto stated. "Besides I do not believe in fate. Fate is the crutch the weak of spirit use to make themselves feel better when they fail. You Neji Hyuga do not strike me as a failure; therefore, you have no reason to rally against fate. But enough of this sad trip down memory lane, en guard!" Naruto's tentacles lashed out toward the cursed Hyuga causing him to bob, dodge, and lunge away from them until he was caught with the wall to his back and arms coming at him from four different directions. A split second before any claw could connect; Neji started spinning rapidly becoming a blur of expelled chakra, knocking the metal tentacles away.

"Hakkeshō Kaiten! (Eight Trigrams Palms Heavenly Spin)" The crowd's silence was replaced shouts of surprise at the sight of one of the Main Branch's signature moves.

'To learn the Kaiten without any aid," Hiashi thought. 'Truly you are a genius, my nephew.'

'That's Neji's ultimate defense,' Tenten thought to herself. 'He can see 360 degrees around himself and expel chakra from all of his chakra points spinning like a top to deflect any attack.'

"Neat trick," Naruto commented. "Looks like somebody else has got an 'Ultimate Defense' I'm going to have to cut through. So, let's see how long you can keep it up."

The tentacles sprang back to life attacking Neji at random points across his defense forcing the Hyuga to continue spinning or to take a hit. The pattern continued for several minutes, Neji would block a strike which would cause the arm to be knocked backward, a second arm would attack, Neji would block that strike and then be forced to block the recovering first arm and a strike from a third arm. And then suddenly, Naruto's eyes widened, he smirked, and his arms started attacking in a new pattern ending with Naruto's lower right arm catching Neji's left wrist and Naruto's upper right arm hitting Neji in the left cheek. Naruto's tentacle released Neji's wrist and the momentum of the face shot caused Neji to hit the wall near him. Naruto retracted his tentacles a bit so they were closer to him but still far enough to keep Neji at a distance.

"I refuse to be defeated by the likes of you," Neji growled as he shook the cobwebs out of his head. Naruto mentally ordered his tentacles to attack again prompting Neji to counter with the Kaiten once more to block each attack. This time however, it only took one minute for Naruto to exploit a hole into the defense catching Neji in the right knee causing it to buckle, throwing off Neji's defense and allowing Naruto's lower right tentacle to hit Neji in the same cheek, knocking him on his butt.

"Nice shot Number 6. Now do you see? This is why you never refer to something as an 'ultimate.' What happens when it's beaten? Now is your Kaiten the 'Kind of Ultimate Defense,' 'Very Nearly Ultimate Defense,' 'Ultimate Unless Naruto's The One Attacking You In Which Case You're Screwed Defense?' Actually I like that last one." Naruto commented as he walked closer to his downed opponent. Receiving no response Naruto asked, "What's the matter? You were talkative enough before, you have nothing to say?"

"Yeah, you're within the field of my divination," Neji confidently smirked and with a speed only achievable by the incredibly desperate Neji lunged forward to deliver what he hoped would be the finishing blow. "Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"

"Two Palms!" Neji struck Naruto twice. With each subsequent cry, Neji's hands moved twice as fast to deliver twice as many strikes in the same span of time.

"Four Palms!" Neji struck Naruto two more times.

"Eight Palms!" Four more strikes.

"Sixteen Palms!" Eight more strikes.

"Thirty-Two Palms!" Sixteen more strikes.

"Sixty Four Palms!" Thirty-two strikes finished the attack, knocking Naruto backwards a short distance each time and somehow causing his tentacles to drop lifelessly around Neji even though Naruto remained on his feet, his head downcast.

"What talent?" Hiashi whispered. "For a branch member to surpass members of the Main House, it's such a shame he cannot become an heir."

'Naruto!' Hinata, Sakura, Ino and a few others thought simultaneously seeing the blond beaten so hard.

"I knew it." Ino said shutting her eyes and covering her mouth.

'Come on Naruto' Sarutobi thought, 'You beat death, don't let Neji beat you.'

"That tickled," Naruto said, his head and tentacles suddenly shooting up and restraining Neji's appendages. "My turn." Naruto unleashed a variety of punches on the prone Hyuga naming them as he went along. "Haymaker, Jab, Jab, Backfist, Arm Punch, Hammer Fist, Kidney Punch, Rabbit Punch, Uppercut, Left Hook, and Superman!" Naruto finished releasing Neji so that he took the last shot to the face and collapsed backward.

"Hell of a left hook," Genma said, his eyes wide in surprise.

'I have got to remember to thank dad for all these upgrades,' Naruto thought to himself. Smythe had examined Naruto's memories of the Neji vs. Hinata fight and had deduced that if Naruto's chakra coils were thickened the Jyuken strikes would be rendered ineffective as they would be unable to force the coils to constrict, thus cutting of the chakra flow.

"So let's review, I've breached your ultimate defense twice, I can shrug off the cornerstone of your offensive abilities, and I've probably cracked if not broken half a dozen of your ribs. I'd advice you save us all some trouble and give up now." Naruto advised.

"Never!" Neji growled/groaned out forcing himself to his feet again. Naruto backed up several steps giving both men the space to attack. "You only got through my Kaiten through luck."

"Really, let's test your hypothesis," Naruto's tentacles starting their attacks again except this time their attacks were solely focused on Neji's sides. While it is true that the Byakugan gives the bearer three hundred and sixty degrees of vision, It is up to the bearer to focus on what to pay attention to. With his attention so focused on his sides, Neji completely missed the grey masses that grew out of Naruto's forearms and formed into a pair of metal bracers like those once worn by the villain known as the Shocker.

"Just when you think you know the answers, I change the questions." Naruto raised his armored arms forward and together and pressed a trigger on the side of the gauntlets causing an invisible column of compressed air to strike the front of Neji's Kaiten. As Naruto's tentacles retracted, Neji put his effort in reinforcing the Kaiten's barrier in front of him as he was forced backward by the air blast, until he finally lost his footing and the Kaiten encased Neji was rapidly thrust into the arena wall causing a massive impact with the stone structure.

In the blink of an eye, Naruto appeared in front of Neji and buried his right gauntlet in Neji's gut. The Hyuga's world exploded as the gauntlet's vibrations shook all of his bones, aggravating all of his injuries and tearing at his insides. Neji coughed up blood and slumped forward onto Naruto's arm beginning to black out. Naruto leaned forward slightly and whispered just loud enough for just the conscious Neji to hear, "I have broken you, Neji Hyuga, but what is broken can be mended. If your clan has clipped your wings, then come to me and I promise that you that the broken bird shall fly."

_(Author Note: And that ends Chapter 3. Don't worry, some of the missing weeks will be explained in future, can't show all my cards yet. I'll get to work on Chapter 4…whenever I do. Honestly, I've got another fic (Naruto: Chikagami: The Blood's Mirror) that I've been neglecting especially since it's on a cliffhanger. Please check it out; I'd like some ideas for events from the series past to change. Also I've got a few one-shot ideas that I'd like to crank out from a few different series in response to some commonly seen themes in fan-fiction I've read. I put a poll up on my page about this and got a whopping…3 votes! It's as of press time a three-way tie between: Depends on the one shot idea, I guess; I don't care, I'm just praying one of your fics is going to be M-rated so I can read a lemon from you; and Go for it, but if you abandon your series, I'll hunt you down. Please vote on that poll._

_Well that's it for me. Next time we see the new Naruto's reactions to the rest of the round's fights among other things and before the end of the Chunin Exam arc we shall see at least one more villain's powers in our favorite blond titular character. So until then, enjoy what is according to my beta An, my most cerebral Omake yet!_

_Omake: How to Taunt a Hyuga_

"Ready. Fight!" Genma instructed getting out of the way of the two combatants. Neither party moved for the first few seconds as they stared at the other, white eyes in anger and blue in confident indifference.

"Too scared to move?" Neji taunted, hoping to get a rise from the normally easily angered blond.

"Nope," Naruto replied happily. "Just curious how well you can fight with a stick up your ass."

"Your attempts to distract me are fated to fail."

"Is that what your girlfriend said last night?" Naruto countered.

"There is nothing you can say that will affect me."

"Your mother was a pleasant human being that everybody loved being around."

"NOW YOU DIE!" Neji yelled with bloodlust in his eyes.

And so everybody learned that day that the fastest way to make a Hyuga angry was to say nice things about their mother.


	4. Chapter 4: The Spaces In Between

_Greetings NYFNU fans! Once more your favorite Spiderman/Naruto crossover by the Dark Patrician has come to improve your day! But first a few items that need to be addressed:_

_Why has it been so long since the last chapter? Answer: A.) I have a life and B.) I put up the last chapter on Christmas Day 2010…and did not receive any reviews for about 3 weeks, thank you Bazerkerking for breaking the drought. When I don't get reviews, well frankly I lose interest. And C.) for those of you who don't click on my name and go to my author page, I have posted two one shots in the Doctor Who section that I enjoyed working on and updated Chikagami: The Blood's Mirror._

_Anyway, enough note onto the chapter. I don't own Spiderman, Marvel, or Naruto…somebody else does, although I could be persuaded to give up my attempts to own them if I got some working Doc Ock style tentacles. _

**Chapter 4: The Spaces In Between**

_(First person POV)_

I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed that. There is nothing quite like completely decimating an adversary to make a man feel alive. Speaking of adversaries, I looked down at my fallen enemy, Neji Hyuga. He has such potential and yet it is all wasted on his worship of fate and hatred of the Main Hyuga House. Not to say that Neji's hatred was wasted, but rather unfocused like a campfire compared to a blowtorch. Both can accomplish many things, but the blowtorch burns hotter and more direct.

I glanced over toward the referee; Genma I believe was his name. My looking at him seems to have snapped him out of his stupor at the sudden victory as he remembers his job and begins his announcement, "Winner of the match, Naruto Uzu…"

"Octavius-Smythe," I interrupted.

"What?" Genma asks confused.

"That is my new last name, please abide by my request."

"Very well," Genma replied with a questioning undertone. "Winner of the match, Naruto Octavius-Smythe." The crowd's reaction was just as confused as Genma's reaction to my new name. The Konoha natives were relatively quiet while the out of town attendees cheered at my victory, makes sense, the foreigners didn't know they were supposed to hate me like Konoha does.

In this situation, the old me would have been laughing, waving, and jumping around in childlike celebration. The new me chose a more dignified response, nodding my head in thanks in the general direction of those I saw cheering. Number 6 retrieved my trench coat and draped it over my shoulder as I crossed my flesh arms. I walked toward the contestant holding area intent on giving the viewing audience one more show; instead of taking the stairs, I walked directly toward the wall. My upper two tentacles stretched forward and latched onto a section of the wall above me and pulled upward lifting me into the air. My lower two tentacles stretched forward and latched onto the wall above the first two and working in concert, my four tentacles carried me up the wall (think Doc Ock climbing the walls in Spiderman 2). My climb ended with two tentacles wrapping around two of the pillars in the contestant's viewing area and pulling me over the railing and safely onto my feet among my competition. All four tentacles released from whatever they had attached to and retracted taking positions to defend me from any attack.

"Hello everyone," I said pleasantly. "Funny how we all seem to end up sitting in the same area isn't it? So, how's everything?"

"Troublesome," Shikamaru replied. "First I'm in this stupid tournament, then they drop my fight with the Sound ninja, and now you've shown up with a new last name and weird powers."

"Indeed," Shino stated. "Why have you changed your last name to Octavius-Smythe?"

"To honor the men who saved my life and brought me into their family after my brush with death," I answered simply. Both of my former classmates looked at me as if they wanted to ask more questions but I cut them off by asking, "So where's Sasuke? He show up yet?"

"Not yet," Shikamaru answered, "And he better show up soon, most of the crowd came to watch him fight Gaara." If one listened closely, one could hear the grumbling from various parts of the stadium:

"What's going on? Hurry up and start the next match!"

"How long are you going to keep us waiting?"

"Bring on the Uchiha!"

"PBTTTTTTTT!" That last sound was not actually spoken but expelled by the guy that ate too many beans. Medics had to rush to that corner to recover those who passed out after the gas attack.

"Confucius said, 'The wise do not approach the dangerous,'" Shino recited, "perhaps Sasuke has taken that advice and will not fight."

"That's not his style," I countered. "Sasuke loves testing his power too much to pass on the chance of fighting one of the most powerful genin in the tournament." I noticed Gaara staring at me out of the corner of my eye. Nobody said anything else as we all waited to see what would happen to the absent Uchiha. I took advantage of the wait time until Sasuke's match to inspect my tentacles for damages. The tentacles were in relatively good shape only a few small scratches and dents, nothing debilitating but at the same time it was impressive that the Jyuken could cause even a little damage to my father's legacy. The dents and natural curvature of the tentacles caused an interesting warping in my reflection, but despite how warped the face was I could still see my reflection's black eyes staring back at me smiling.

"No wonder you fought so fast, you wanted to get back to looking at yourself in the mirror," a familiar voice teased in my head via implant.

"You're just jealous you've never had a stadium of girls getting wet over your arrival Father," I replied to one of my fathers, Alistair Smythe.

"There was that one time at the robotics seminar in Amsterdam when I…"

"I do not wish to know of your youthful indiscretions Smythe," my other father Otto Octavius, creator of my tentacles, interrupted. "Can we just go to the post-fight analysis?"

"That ass put up a good fight, but in the end he was no match for our upgraded gauntlets," a gravely voiced man commented, "nice fighting Naruto."

"Thank you Shocker," I replied. "Although we may have to increase the padding a bit, I could feel the vibrations from that last punch numbing me all the way to my shoulder."

"After this silly tournament, we shall look into adjusting it, but maintaining the balance among the various abilities and their requirements is no easy feat." Otto cautioned.

"Agreed, how was the feed from the ocular implants?" I asked.

"A little static when you first activated Otto's tentacles and whenever you used Shocker's abilities," Alistair answered. "Why did you use both abilities anyway?"

"To see how they would react to Neji's Kaiten," I replied. "And to see how well they would react with your ocular upgrade." No doubt, some of you are confused as to what I'm talking about. During my two weeks in the chasm, Alistair began the process to slowly give me his transformed state's powers and abilities, making sure a thousand times a minute that in no way would I be stuck in the transformed state for the rest of my life. Alistair may be a brilliant scientist but I swear he can be such a mother hen at times. I finally managed to convince him to install the small head up display (HUD) that would place itself in front of my eyes without anybody noticing, clear glass versus his yellow tinted ones. This display would overlay what I saw with information from tiny sensors embedded within myself that would constantly scan whatever they were pointed at or whatever was around me. In the case of Neji, these sensors tracked the pattern of Neji's Kaiten and were able to successfully predict where and when I needed to strike to penetrate the so called "Ultimate Defense."

"And the fact that displaying this power would scare those around you who might do you harm into thinking twice didn't factor into your decision?" Otto asked sarcastically.

"Little bit," I answered smirking. "The people here have looked down on me for years, a display of power in defeating one a member of Konoha's most respected clans should show them that I am a superior being."

"If I could have everybody's attention!" Genma shouted after conferring with another shinobi. "One of the contestants for the next match hasn't arrived yet! Therefore, we will push this match back and begin the next one!"

"An interesting development," I commented out loud as those around actually gaped in shock.

"Crap!" Shikamaru swore displaying the most emotion I had ever seen on his face, "This means my match is getting closer."

"The next match: Kankuro vs. Shino Aburame! Please enter the arena!" Genma shouted, specifically toward the contestant section. There was a pause of about ten seconds before Kankuro answered back loudly enough for Genma to hear but not quite shouting, "I forfeit!" As several of us around the Suna genin in black stared in surprise at his actions, his attractive sister Temari opened up her fan and floated down into the arena on a gust of wind she created.

"Winner Shino Aburame! The next match: Temari vs. Shikamaru Nara!"

I noticed Shikamaru pause and mutter to himself about forfeiting too so I decided to offer my two cents. "Which would be more troublesome Shikamaru?" I asked. Fighting one girl now or an eternity of nagging by two girls: your mother and Ino?" Shikamaru visibly paled at the thought of his mother nagging him for the rest of his life over this issue and reluctantly makes his way down the stairs.

The two fighters stood across from each other put on about twenty seconds of frantic swinging of weapons at each other and then leapt to opposite ends of the stadium to fight a battle…of math. Yep, nothing says 'We're awesome ninja,' like watching two shinobi do math in their heads. This could be very long and boring, I wonder what the others are doing?

*Scene Break*

The medical wing of the stadium is located along the outer wall of the structure to allow a degree of peace and quiet from the fighting within. It was in a private room of the medical wing where Neji Hyuga listened to his uncle tell him the story of how Neji's father sacrificed himself to protect his brother, the head of the Hyuga clan. I watched unseen outside the open window as Hiashi told his story and handed Neji a scroll, presumable written by Neji's father to back it up. But nothing surprised either Neji or myself more than the head of the Hyuga clan actually physically getting down on his hands and knees to beg forgiveness from his nephew.

"Please, raise your head," Neji instructed, tears on his cheeks. Hiashi Hyuga stood up and the Hyuga duo talked for another moment before Hiashi left the room, leaving Neji alone. My ex-opponent walked over to the window, looked at the birds in the sky and began talking to himself, "Father, is a person's destiny like a cloud with an inescapable flow or can a person choose the flow he wishes? I don't know. But I want to grow stronger…but I don't know how. Should I stay with the clan and strive to become the strongest Hyuga of them all? But my opponent thoroughly destroyed me and negated the Jyuken, should I talk to Uzumaki about he would help me fly?"

A better opening, I could not have asked for.

"I go by Octavius-Smythe now," I stated, watching the same birds. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Neji give a slight start as he hadn't noticed me. "How are you feeling?"

"My ribs are a bit tender," Neji admitted. "What did you hit me with?"

"Multiple concussive vibration waves within a localized area," I explained. Neji looked at me with a puzzled look on his face. "It's complicated to explain," I admitted. "Mind if I come in?" Neji nodded and stepped away from the window to let me climb in. "I came here to talk to you about what you said in the arena, I thought about it and after seeing this display I just wanted to say…"

"I'm sorry," Neji cut me off with his apology. "I should have let go of my rage and not taken it out on you."

"No," I answered. "You shouldn't have taken it out on me, but you shouldn't let go…not yet. I wanted to say, I'm sorry, you were right. After seeing what Hiashi Hyuga just did, I'm convinced you were right."

Neji looked at me confused, "But everything he just said and did…"

"A very good job of acting," I interrupted. "He must have been planning this for a while."

"I don't understand…why don't you believe Hiashi?" Neji asked.

"Let's break it down," I began stating. "Fact, your father died taking the place of your uncle to satisfy Kumo's demands. Fact, the loss of your father has caused you to adopt a hatred of the Hyuga clan to almost rebellious levels. Fact, the Main Branch of the Hyuga clan hates rebellion…or any form of change really," I added as an afterthought, "Especially in their clothes, any time I pranked one of them they'd just throw whatever clothes they were wearing at the time away."

"That was you?" Neji asked with a subdued mix of surprise and awe. "The branch clan saw that as a bright spot of their existence watching the results of those pranks."

"Thank you for the compliment, but we're getting off track. Where were we…ah, rebellion. Fact, Hyuga in the past have been executed for far smaller crimes than nearly killing the clan heiress. Fact, you're still alive. Why? Fact, with your victory over Hinata you've become a high profile target. Fact, you are without a doubt one of the strongest Hyuga that clan has ever produced, especially if you recreated their signature techniques through simple observation. Fact, while the Hyuga hate rebellion they hate embarrassment more so. Do you realize what this all means?"

"That you like using the word 'fact' a lot?" Neji asked somewhat confused.

"No," I answered slightly annoyed. "For all accounts you should have been killed by the Main Branch the moment the Second Stage of the Chunin Exam ended; and yet, here you stand. Why? Because everybody knows who you are and how powerful you are. It would make the Hyuga clan look very bad if they killed the member that is looked at as the strongest of the future generation. So, instead of killing you they need to bring you back into line."

"Then why does my Caged Bird Seal remain inactivated?"

"Because a beaten dog will try to bite its master," I replied. "Instead of pain the main branch is trying a paradigm shift."

"A what?"

"Changing from one way of thinking to another." I explained quickly. "You had this image of your father being thrown to the dogs, but now suddenly they introduce this image of your father 'rebelling,'" I added air quotes here for emphasis, "against his masters to nobly sacrifice himself to save his brother. A pretty convenient story, one that makes me wonder why it hasn't been told to you sooner."

Neji's eyes widened as he began processing my explanation.

"Answer: They didn't need to change your way of thinking, yet. They were willing to overlook you because you hadn't done anything yet. Then, all of a sudden, you prove yourself superior to the clan heiress, in front of witness including the Hokage. Now, they can't kill you because the Hokage knows that your death will take away what could be a valuable resource in the future. So instead, the Main Branch invents this tale of your father's death complete with 'proof.' How old were you when he died Neji? Four? Five? It's been almost a decade, if they had proof of his noble death, why didn't they say anything sooner?"

*Scene Break*

I was right, it was long and boring. I'll spare you the boring details of the match, if you're interested I'm sure you can look up the official transcript of the fight. I did learn three very important things during the course of that fight though: one, Shikamaru is a genius especially after taking advantage of a hole I apparently left behind; two, I have a dozen games stored in my HUD; three, Shocker is addicted to FreeCell.

"No," Shocker growled, "Put the red four and black five on the red six you freed up and then move all the ones that were under that onto the red ten."

"But if he does that," Alistair countered, "Then there will be two more cards that will have to be removed before he frees up the Ace of Spades."

"So? Most of the spades are…"

"Mein gott!" Otto snapped, "A wonderful display of tactical thinking during a battle is occurring in front of our eyes and you three are more focused on that silly little card game!"

"Sorry," all three of us mumbled as I shut down the program.

"Besides," Otto added as an afterthought, "You should have moved that moved the red seven to the free cell and moved the cards underneath it so the two and three of diamonds could be removed from the game."

"Now he tells us," Shocker grumbled. Before anybody else could comment, a very familiar voice (my own) entered my head, "Beck here, pick up successful. I see Gargan and he's going for his pick up. Awaiting end of first round to begin Phase Two."

"Understood," I replied. "Beck and Gargan continue business as usual. Fisk, begin Operation Daedalus at earliest convenience."

"Daedalus?" Smythe asked. "How do you know about him?"

"My fathers filled my head with knowledge of math and science, Uncle Wilson decided he should fill my head with all the rest," I answered. "Being a philanthropist apparently requires one to know many things about art, culture, and literature."

"I still don't like how close you two have gotten." Smythe complained.

"Relax father, he is not the same man who wronged your biological counterpart. Besides his lessons on reading people, cunning and deception far surpassed anything that the Academy taught…though, I suppose that as a Konoha shinobi, we are supposed to have more honor than to lie and deceive our enemies." I mused.

"That particular ideology seems counter intuitive to the traditional roles that a ninja performs," Otto commented. "However, we must save our discussion for another time, it appears this battle has reached its conclusion." I focused fully on the field below, during my discussions, Shikamaru had forced Temari right where he wanted her in his Kagemane no Jutsu or Shadow Possession Technique. Both of them had their right arms raised in the air and then….Shikamaru forfeited. Yep, long boring math related shinobi fight ends in one party giving up after they trapped the other party. I think I'll miss Shikamaru, I better remember to buy a couple flowers to throw on his grave after Ino and his mom finish with him.

The crowd quieted down after Shikamaru's forfeit, puzzled at his actions, before those who had bet on the fairly attractive Suna blond cheered loudly at their good fortune. Shikamaru released his jutsu and walked up the stairs as Temari angrily scaled the walls with a blast of the wind jutsu that she had used in the fight.

"Think I could combine wind jutsu with your techniques Shocker?" I asked my yellow clad trainer.

"Probably not," Shocker answered. "The wind would mess up the vibrations."

"A shame," I stated. "Well now let's see if my…teammate…will arrive?" There's a saying, 'Speak of the devil and he doth appear,' just as I had finished my statement. Both Sasuke and my…so called sensei…appeared on the field in a swirl of leaves. "Show off," I muttered aloud.

"As most of the crowd had come specifically to watch his match, it would make sense for him to arrive in a fashion to appease their desire," Shino stated in his usual monotone.

"Let's see if he can really deliver then." I said back to him.

"You doubt your teammate's skills?" Shino asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Usually no," I replied. "However, against an opponent like Gaara most of Sasuke's skills are useless: the sand will block the fire attacks, the fluid nature of his sand shield will act too fast for the Sharingan to react, and his sand armor will absorb most of Sasuke's tijutsu strikes and negate the damage."

"What about Genjutsu?" Shino asked.

"He doesn't know any as far as I know." I answered as I watched Gaara appear in the arena with a sand shishun. "Trying to score inside information about Sasuke, Shino? Sorry to break it to you but I haven't seen him for a month, so anything I know about him is that far out of date. But you should be careful that you don't put the cart before the horse, Shino. You may have won your first match before it started by forfeit, but I doubt Temari will forfeit. She's as dangerous as she is beautiful." Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Temari cheeks had slightly reddened at my comment. "Of course even if you can squeak out a victory over that beautiful deadly lady, you'll be fighting me in the finals."

"I see that whatever has given you the additional abilities has not altered your self confidence." Shino said, with just the slightest hint of teasing in his voice. "So you would rather fight Temari than myself in the finals?"

"Eh, it would be nice to fight a woman who stays a woman through the entire fight." I replied. Shino quirked an eyebrow at my statement. "I've fought two women who turned out to be men." Shino's other eyebrow raised as well. "Long stories, I'll tell you someday." Genma stood between but off to the side of the two competitors. "Looks like the featured battle is about to begin," I said.

"Indeed." Shino replied.

"Sasuke Uchiha vs. Gaara. Begin!" Genma shouted before he jumped out of the way.

The battle between Sasuke and Gaara was more like the traditional action packed fight that the crowd expects from the Chunin Exams. Gaara showed off the versatility of his sand forming a clone out of the sand, blocking hits with his sand walls or armor of sand, sending his sand to soften impact with the ground after Sasuke connected with powerful strikes an toward the end forming a dome to protect himself with spikes that attacked the enemy. Sasuke on the other hand showed his prowess with the Sharingan demonstrating the ability to dodge Gaara's attack and his ability to copy the fighting style of Rock Lee which had proven effective against Gaara in the previous round.

What struck me as odd was the facial expression of his two siblings showing bursts of fear and anger toward their brother. Temari actually looked furious at Gaara as he stood within his dome.

"Väters?" I asked my fathers within my head. "Why would Temari be mad at her brother for using a technique? Shouldn't Suna want as many of their members to win as possible?"

"If that was true, then why would Kankaro forfeit?" Smythe asked.

"Maybe he knew he'd be beaten," Shocker offered.

"Too arrogant," Smythe countered.

"Maybe he didn't have any techniques that could defeat Shino?" Shocker suggested.

"He's had a month, I'm sure he must have thought of something," Smythe answered.

"Maybe he's conserving his strength," Shocker said.

"What for?" Smythe asked. "What could be happening that would require a ninja to use his full strength later."

"Wait, those patrols we dodged to enter the city…we never took a close look at them. Maybe they weren't patrollers but…" Otto began.

"Invaders," I suddenly stated. "Konoha is being invaded."

Before any of us could continue the discussion the sound of chirping birds and electricity filled the air as Sasuke formed a ball of lightening in the palm of his hand, Kakashi's Chidori! Kakashi had ditched me for a month so he could teach Sasuke his own technique! Sasuke charged forward and plundged the lightning deep into Gaara's dome. The world paused for a couple seconds before the peace shattered with an ear splitting yell from Gaara.

"WAAAAAA! MY BLOOD!"

Time sped up as Sasuke wrenched his arm out of the dome as a demonic looking claw swept at him. The dome cracked and dissolved leaving Gaara standing in the center clutching his left shoulder. Without warning, feathers started falling from the sky and I felt myself suddenly falling asleep.

*Scene Break at the hospital*

Neji's face contorted in rage as he realized what I was telling him was the truth as he slowly returned to the man he was before our fight. "I'll kill them," Neji muttered. "I'll kill the entire Main Branch for what they did."

"How?" I asked as emotionlessly as I could muster. "How exactly will you do that?"

"I don't know," Neji admitted, "but I'll do it, just you watch."

"The only thing I'll see is the moment you touch a member of the main house somebody will activate your seal and kill you. The only thing I'll see is a flame that would be extinguished. The fire in your soul may burn hot, but it's uncontrolled, unfocused."

"Then what would you do?" Neji asked in tone that was both angry and annoyed.

"Wait," I answered. "Play the role of loyal servant that they want you to: follow tradition, obey orders, and show respect to those you would rather kill. And while you do that; grow stronger, learn as much as you can about your clan's taijutsu style and do what you can to counter it, learn jutsu and techniques that your clan does not know."

"And what about this?" Neji asked gesturing toward his covered up Caged Bird Seal.

"I have found that by using the nanites within my body, I am capable of slowly destroying any seal placed upon me. In fact, one of the first seals that was destroyed was a seal placed upon the back of my neck which interfered with my higher brain functions. My mind, in an attempt to compensate, produced additional neurotransmitters so that I could function normally. Once the seal was destroyed, my brain functioned normally on its own and the additional neurotransmitters now allow me to perform and process information at a far higher level than ever before. All ready, my IQ is similar to that of the average members of the Nara clan and I suspect within a few weeks I can begin to reach levels similar to that of my fathers." I explained.

"And what about the seal that contains the Kyuubi?" Neji asked.

"Tragically while I cannot completely remove…wait, how do you about that?" I asked, slightly annoyed and surprised.

"All members of the Hyuga clan, regardless of age have been told about the demon's sealing within you as to understand why sections of the chakra around your navel have been orange at times." Neji explained. "I was present when Hinata first asked her father about it."

"So even Hinata knew about the fox," I muttered to myself. "She saw me enough with the Byakugan to know about the chakra, and she must have seen how much I struggled with people in the village, and she's supposed to be one of the kindest girls in the village…so why didn't she try to help me?"

"Perhaps it was an act," Neji offered quickly…too quickly, actually.

"Perhaps," I agreed, "but we are off topic, the nanites cannot remove the Kyuubi seal without causing the beast to be released. But perhaps they could remove your seal, or at least the part that causes you pain."

"Why?" Neji asked softly, "Why would you want to help me after all I have done?"

"You are a victim just like me," I answered honestly. "You and I have suffered because of events outside of our control. You because your father was born second and I because no other baby was born on October 10th. Looking at this world and knowing what I now know, I realized that I needed new allies, ones that I could count on completely as apposed to my useless team. That's why after hearing your story, I knew that you were one of the people that I wanted by my side. Neji, I will help you remove your seal and I will give you power that no other Hyuuga has ever had before and all I ask in return is that you work with me."

"Don't you mean for you?" Neji asked.

"At times yes, I will want you to obey me, but ultimately you will be one of my allies, a partner in my vision of the future. What do you think?"

Neji didn't say a word but just stared at me for a few moments, as if studying me for any signs of deceit.

"Could I have some time to think about it?" Neji asked.

"As long as you promise not to share this conversation with another soul," I countered. Neji nodded in agreement. "Very well, think about what I am offering, my door is open to you Neji Hyuga."

BOOM! The sounds of an explosion filled the air from outside the city walls. Neji and I dashed to the window and looked out to see a giant snake in the distance had just crashed through a wall.

"All units," my own voice said in my ear seconds later, "looks like Orochimaru is launching an attack, literally, giant snakes are attacking, Suna and Oto shinobi are fighting Konoha's, Gaara's freaking out, looks like he's heading for the forest, and that idiot Sasuke is chasing after him. Beck and Gargan units lay low and only fight if necessary. Fisk unit, upon completion of the mission, engage enemy units as necessary. I'll handle the grunt work."

"Understood," I and two other versions of me responded. I turned back to Neji who was looking at me curiously. "Looks like they started a party out there, you stay and heal up."

*Scene Break back with the original Naruto seconds after the scene break started*

What felt like seconds later, my eyes shot open.

"Adrenal stimulation successful," Otto reported in my ear. "He's awake."

"All systems report normal," Smythe added. "Naruto, how do you feel?"

"Confused," I said as I looked around, no longer seeing anybody I had shared a box with. "Where did they all go?"

"We don't know," Smythe replied. "We lost the visual when you went unconscious." My ears picked up the sounds of fighting all over the stadium.

"Huh," I exclaimed. "Sounds like one heck of a party." I looked down into the arena in time to catch Genma slashing a Suna ninja's arm off. "I don't think I like this crowd, they play too rough." I caught a flash of purple light and looked up to watch four purple columns of light flash into existence and form a cube surrounding the roof of the building opposite myself, trapping two individuals inside. My eyes widened as I recognized the duo inside, one clutching the other in a sleeper hold: the Hokage, and Orochimaru. My tentacles stretched and latched onto the level above me and began pulling me upward. As I reached the spectators level, I heard the voice of Kakashi off toward my left.

"…nullify the genjutsu on Shikamaru and track down Sasuke." Kakashi ordered.

"Shouldn't I wake up the others?" Sakura asked, hiding behind one of the seats. Before Kakashi could answer one of the Suna ninja leapt at him, kunai at the ready. I reacted quickly, firing off a blast from the Shocker's gauntlet and knocking the ninja into the wall behind Sakura.

"Naruto!" Kakashi and Sakura shouted.

"Yo," I replied in my best Kakashi voice.

"Naruto, Sasuke's chasing after Gaara. You, Sakura, and Shikamaru, will have to chase after him." Kakashi ordered.

"Can't," I replied, still climbing upward and letting off the occasional blast toward the enemy ninja. "I'm on a mission from a higher authority. But I'll add it to the side quests!" I made it to the roof before Kakashi could respond.

"Mission from a higher authority?" Smythe asked.

"Yeah, myself. No way am I going to listen to that idiot right now." I answered casually.

"And what exactly is this mission?" Otto questioned.

"One that Uncle Wilson would love," I replied as I mentally ordered the tentacles to retract into my body and return to their nanite form. "And you too Shocker, I'm going to find out just how strong your gauntlets are." Before anybody could say anything, I aimed both gauntlets toward the ground at and angle and fired a quick pulse as I leapt into the air. The two attacks collided and caused a shock wave that lifted me higher into the air. I repeated this pattern many times, each time rising further and further into the air until I was far above Konoha. As I rose, I caught sight or rather my HUD locked onto Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro in the clearing before one of Konoha's many forests, Sasuke not far behind. I also spotted a trio of massive snakes wearing bibs for some reason breaching Konoha's walls.

"Time to show them how its done," I opened communication with the clones I made earlier in the day. "All units, looks like Orochimaru is launching an attack, literally, giant snakes are attacking, Suna and Oto shinobi are fighting Konoha's, Gaara's freaking out, looks like he's heading for the forest, and that idiot Sasuke is chasing after him. Beck and Gargan units lay low and only fight if necessary. Fisk unit, upon completion of the mission, engage enemy units as necessary. I'll handle the grunt work."

"Exactly how are you going to do this?" Otto asked.

"Like this," I replied reaching my peak. The nanites within me activated, changing form as the gauntlets retracted within my body only to be replaced by metallic "feathers" which formed wings that reached from a pack that formed on my back that generated an anti-gravity field to my hands which were now covered in metal "talons" to complete the Vulture-motif. "One final touch," I put my hands together to form the familiar hand sign, "Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu! (Multiple Shadow Clone Technique)" The cloud created by my technique combined with my position caused the city below to temporarily plunge into darkness as my clouds shadow covered the land. When the cloud dispersed, those below would see the skies full of winged copies of myself.

"Secret Technique: Toomes Flock no Jutsu!" My clones and I shouted as we began our group decent on the city.

_Author's Notes:_

_Should have had this one last chapter but: Auf Wiedersehen Väter translates to "Goodbye fathers" in English. I don't know exactly why, but for some reason I really like the idea of Naruto peppering his language with the occasional moment of German._

_The boost in intelligence Naruto receives is similar to what happened to the character of Reginald Barcley in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: The Nth Degree, it's a great episode I suggest you watch it sometime._

_This chapter titles comes from part of the Weezer song "Beverly Hills," don't know why it just felt right._

_Finally, I've got a new poll up on my profile which directly connects with this story. "For the Sound/Suna invasion in Not Your Friendly Neighborhood Uzumaki which would you prefer to see?" The choices are: short chapters which will focus on one battle, medium length chapters which will focus on a couple fights, or long chapters that cover multiple fights? Basically, the longer the chapter, the longer the wait time._

_Months later: the end result…the voters would prefer a medium length chapter (19 votes)…like this one, I think. Long chapters took second place with 14 votes…just think how long the wait time would've been if I had written a lot more huh? And rounding out the pack in a distant third are short chapters with two votes._

_Until next time, my loyal readers._

And now for the Omake, this is my response to the running gag throughout many Naruto fan-fictions of everybody but Naruto knowing about Hinata's crush.

_Omake: The Finest Scientific Minds of Their Generation_

During his weeks of training, Naruto was exposed to many new ideas and had many of his own questions answered, this is one such question that he had answered.

"What I don't understand is why Hinata always turns so red around me and then sometimes passes out." Naruto commented. "Do either of you have an idea?"

Alistair and Otto looked at each other for a moment before turning back to their charge and Alistair said, "I'm not sure, but we'll ask the others and be back in a few minutes with an answer." The duo of villains disappeared and reappeared within the computer's main processor in a conference room populated by all of the minds that were scanned and held within. Well not literally, ones and zeros can't sit on chairs but for visual effect go with that.

Otto pulled out an empty chair, sat down in it, and announced, "Gentlemen, the problem before us is this…why does the girl called Hinata turn red around Naruto?"

The room fell silent as each individual racked their brains to come up with the answer.

"Naruto. Naruto! WAKE UP!" Naruto shot up from bed as Alistair shouted near his head.

"What! What happened? Are we under attack?" Naruto asked in a combination of frantic worry and sleepiness.

"We've come up with an answer to your question." Otto explained.

"What question?" Naruto asked rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"The one about Hinata and turning red," Alistair said. Naruto looked at his alarm clock and then back at his fathers. "It's four in the morning; I asked you that over sixteen hours ago."

"It was a complicated issue," Otto explained. "The intricacies of the mind of a pubescent female is not something that we are intimately familiar with so we had to extrapolate from pre-existing data."

"And?"

"We would need further testing to confirm our hypothesis, but we believe that Hinata is allergic to you."

"That's good to know," Naruto yawned. "Well, see you in the morning."

"Good night," Alistair replied happily before he and Otto moved to leave the room.


	5. Chapter 5: TWTSTS: Metallica Reference

_Greetings angry mob of NYFNU fans that have likely formed during the wait, Dark Patrician here wishing you a happy 2012 and a PLEASE DON'T HURT ME FOR THE WAIT! You know what the worst combination of personality traits is? Being a pessimist and a perfectionist? Seriously, I kept reworking this and it still doesn't feel absolutely perfect to me…not helped by the fact that just about every fiction I read seems better than mine in some way so I'm trying to make an amalgam of greatness. I mean it; look at my favorites list…not a crappy one in site._

Dylan Millwood sent me an idea via PM that sounds interesting but wouldn't work for me because it would cause me to tread over the same ground a bit, and the last thing I want to be is one of those guys on the site who re-writes their own story a few dozen times just changing where Naruto gets extra powers from.

"One where Naruto ends up as the Scorpion sound good to you. Thing is, after he first starts with the side-effects of mutagenic treatment catch the Kyubbi's intrest, it alters Naruto until he goes from being the Mac Gargan-version of Scorpion to the Kron Stone-version of Marvil 2099."

_There you go, turn Naruto into the Scorpion…have at it._

_Note I wrote this little rant months ago, its resolved now, but I really like this rant and would like for somebody else to read it: After reading chapter 541 all I've got to say is…."WHO CARES!" It's like Kishimoto listened to people complaining about all of these reunion chapters with dead characters and went 'Okay, you don't like it, how about this?' Hello, there's a Shinobi World War going on here, do we really have time to stop and listen to the mysterious origin story of the names "A" & "B"? You want to pad the series? Fine, how about doing it with some interesting stuff like say…Gaara fighting the 2nd Tsuikage! Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't they have a run-in of sorts? Why not expand on that?_

_And he did…wait does that mean that Kishimoto read my mind from a while back? Hmmm, quick test then…Why doesn't Kishimoto do something like…Naruto killing off all the Zetsu clones with the Harem no Jutsu?_

_Well you've tired of me rambling, or have probably just skipped to the actual story but quick note, I never got an updated version of the last chapter from my beta so, heck with it, if you haven't read last chapter since…last year, pop back and read the new omake…I'll wait._

_Good wasn't it? I thought so too. Now on with the show...err…text!_

_Previously on NYFNU: _

Naruto Uzumaki is thrown into a chasm by Jiraiya of the Sannin, Naruto tries to get Kyuubi to give him chakra, fails, and dies. But fortunately he is brought back to life by the efforts of Alastair Smythe and Otto Octavius. Naruto confronts Kyuubi and crushes Kyuubi's mind with his own turning the demon fox into a giant battery. Armed with upgrades from several of his new family members including Doctor Octopus, the Shocker, and the Vulture, Naruto defeats Neji Hyuuga with ease. Then during the Sasuke/Gaara fight, a genjutsu renders our hero unconscious momentarily. He wakes up and takes off into the skies before using his Shadow Clone Technique to make an army of Shadow Clones to dive bomb the invading force. And now….

**Chapter 5: The War to Settle the Score Pt.1: Metallica Reference applicable to Gaara**

No matter where a shinobi was born, all of them were the same deep down inside, such as training to improve themselves and controlling the elements to a degree. Shinobi also shared many of the same fears: the wrath of the kages, losing a loved one somehow, platypuses…platypi…platapeople…whatever the plural is, don't ask it's a long story that stretches back to the cause of the Second Shinobi World War, and finally rounding out the list was fighting an opponent who could fly. On this day in the village of Konoha, no matter what side of the conflict they were on, all the ninjas in the village saw an army of flying ninja appear out of thin air and descend on them and as one they all said the same thing …. "Pound Sign, Ampersand, Percent Sign, Exclamation Point."

The skies over Konoha darkened as hundreds upon hundreds of Naruto Octavius-Smythe's filled the air. Silently the swarm descended, separating into teams of three or four to confront trouble throughout the village.

Before we get too deep into the story, I as the author/narrator…(Does this count as self insertion into a fan fic?)...had better explain an important plot point that will make things much simpler to understand.

Kage Bushin no Jutsu, literally translated as the Shadow Clone Technique is unique among the jutsu that exist in the world. It is labeled as a B-rank Supplementary technique and placed within Konoha's Forbidden Scroll of Sealing for two reasons. One, the jutsu is very demanding on the user's chakra supply using half of the user's current reserves for the absolute minimum of results and two, the jutsu causes intense mental strain due to brain of the user being forced to assimilate the memories of dispelled clones.

What makes the Kage Bushin unique among all the different Clone Techniques is the fact that the Shadow Clones have the same memories, knowledge, and experiences as the original; excluding a submissive streak of some degree toward the original and the fact that the Kage Bushin would dispel if hit with sufficient force, there is no difference between the creator and the creation. Upon reflection, this is a lot like the relationship between Dr. Doom and his Doombots.

The hordes of Naruto dove into battle many of them either tackling their enemies with claws drawn, slashing with wings, or switching modes to strike with gauntlet blasts or metal tentacles.

* * *

Anko Mitarashi wasn't enjoying her day, first, she was out of maple syrup for the pancakes she ate for breakfast; second, Kurenai hadn't paid her the money she owed Anko because she lost the bet about Hinata failing the Chunin Exam…sure the nearly dying part was sad, but a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks; third, she couldn't proctor or watch the Chunin Exam Finals because the Third Hokage had ordered her to protect some stupid nobleman's servants that he didn't bring with him to the arena; fourth, the servants were perverts who kept staring at her chest and ass; fifth, she missed the first half of "As the Kunai Twirls" because the servants just had to finish watching "The Amount is Correct"; sixth, a giant three headed snake burst through the city wall destroying Konoha's only TV transmitter just as Ryuu was about to find out if Hoshi was really his son or if Hikari had cheated on him with his brother Mikoto; seventh, one of the servants had the gall to grab her ass as she jumped out the window; eighth, the ass grab caused her to have a wedgie in the underwear that most people in Konoha didn't believe she actually wore; ninth, the two Oto ninja she was currently fighting were perverts who kept staring at her chest; and rounding out the list at tenth, the ninjas were actually skilled enough to prevent her from killing them.

"Come on baby, we don't need to fight," the first Oto ninja said.

"Yeah, we'll show you a good time instead," his partner added.

"Oh?" Anko said quizzically. "Well if you want to show me a good time why don't you come closer and let me see your blood?" Anko punctuated her statement with a flourish of kunai that almost hit the ninja duo.

"You had your chance; if you aren't going to give up we're just going to have to take what we want!" Both Oto ninja's charged at the purple haired jonin, but suddenly they were blindsided by a pair of orange wearing ninja diving out of the sky and colliding with them. The first Naruto tackled his opponent into a wall causing the Oto ninja's head to strike it with a thud and his body to go limp.

"Well," Anko said with a small smirk, "If it isn't my favorite loudmouth. Since when can you fly?"

Before either Naruto could respond, the second Sound ninja screamed as the second Naruto's talons found bare patches of flesh to latch onto. The second original piece of technology built by Adrian Tombs activated and the Sound ninja's voice quieted down as he felt the energy drain from his body as it was forcibly aged: hair graying, muscles and bones weakening, and taut skin wrinkling and sagging. Naruto and Anko stared in shock as the Naruto that was holding onto the aging ninja felt the energy from his victim flow into himself.

"Fūton: Daitoppa (Wind Style: Great Breakthrough)!" a nearby Suna ninja shouted as he released a blast of wind that threw the Naruto that drained youth into himself into a wall, imbedding him into it. The purple haired jonin rushed the Suna ninja, stabbing him with a kunai in one of the eight zones of the body and kicking him away.

"That's odd," the other Naruto commented as he crouched by his counterpart.

"What?" Anko asked walking to his side.

"This clone was thrown into a wall and he didn't pop." The downed Naruto started to stir but was cut off by a kunai coming out of nowhere to strike the clone in the shoulder causing it to disappear in a cloud of smoke. Narutos all over the village blinked simultaneously as their fallen comrade's knowledge suddenly filtered into their minds.

"The foreign chakra acts as a shield," all of the Narutos realized but only the one near Anko said out loud. Across the village, the Narutos changed their fighting strategy now starting to get closer to their enemies to drain them of their chakra, life force, and/or youth whatever you would call it.

* * *

Temari wasn't very happy; she had stayed behind to give her brother's time to get away from Sasuke Uchiha. She was low on chakra and was set on making the Uchiha waste as much of his as possible. But unfortunately, despite her superior jutsu and tactical decision to generate sand to give her more of an advantage…she had fallen into the Uchiha's trap: a simple Kawarimi no Jutsu and the Uchiha had booby trapped the log he used his substitution on with an exploding tag. The resulting explosion had thrown her backward injuring her back and making her cough up blood. The Uchiha had dismissed her as not worth his time and taken off after her brother before she blacked out.

Upon regaining consciousness, Temari discovered two things…1.) Her back was killing her and 2.) Her battle attire had seen better days. Sasuke's fire jutsu and explosive tag had badly burned and ripped a few holes in her kimono. While Temari was far from prudish and had at times used her growing feminine figure to distract opponents, the thought of being in the middle of enemy territory hurt and semi-nude did not appeal to her. The fan wielding kunoichi looked around taking stock of where she was and how long she had been out. The sun was still in roughly the same location so not much time had passed, the sounds of battle seemed like they were in the same distance and direction as when she was knocked out, and that trench coat on the metal branch was still there…wait.

"I thought you could use this," a somewhat familiar voice said from behind the tree, a head cautiously poked out and looked toward Temari. "I'd offer you some aspirin or other pain reliever but I doubt you'd accept."

"Why would I? You're teammates with the Uchiha." Temari replied

"Yeah, but frankly he's an ass that gets too much credit in life." Naruto paused and tilted his head up a little bit as if he was hearing something. "Is having two large sand appendages normal for your brother?"

"Oh no, Gaara's seal was weakened; he's transforming into Shukaku!"

"Who's Shukaku?" Naruto asked genuinely confused.

"The one-tailed demon inside Gaara" Temari explained.

"Well…crap," Naruto stated as he ran through the new information. "Come on, put this on and let's go to your brother." Naruto threw his trench coat toward the blond kunoichi who caught it cautiously.

"Why should I put this on?" Temari asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I just thought you'd prefer not to let everybody know what color underwear you're wearing," Naruto replied with a shrug of his shoulders. Temari unconsciously blushed at the thought of Naruto knowing that before quickly throwing the trench coat on. "Come on, we'd better move fast." Both ninja disappeared in a burst of speed and started racing through the tree tops towards Gaara, Naruto staying slightly behind Temari incase her injuries caught up to her. "So," Naruto began breaking the silence. "Do you always color coordinate your underwear with your sash?"

* * *

Hermann Göring, a Nazi general in Adrain Tomb's world said, "He who controls the skies controls the war." It was this phrase which helped shape Tomb's fighting style and subsequently shaped Naruto's flying fighting style. A team of ten Naruto's flew toward the three headed snake and broke off into groups, three groups of three and a solo Naruto who flew high above the battleground. The mutated serpent never saw the team coming as it was too interested in trying to consume the Konoha shinobi attacking its body with jutsu.

"Team One you're clear, start your run," the overhead Naruto ordered. "Team Two, once Team One has struck their target start your run. Team Three wait until Team Two makes contact then start your attack." The relevant Naruto's gave their confirmations and attacked starting a dangerous aerial ballet against serpent style Cerberus: attack, draw the heads' attention and break away as the next group attacks, repeat until the solo Naruto makes his move. The simple but effective pattern began and played out until the solo Naruto saw his opening and down from the sky easily exceeding terminal velocity. In one fluid motion before striking the snake, Naruto swapped out his wings for the Shocker's gauntlets and connected dead center with the center head's skull causing it to break open with a loud sickening crack. The vibrations from the Shocker's gauntlets moved into the beasts' exposed brain either knocking out or killing the center head. Either way, the center head and neck fell to the ground causing a ripple of shock to spread through the rest of the body, paralyzing it and giving the other Naruto's the opening they needed to swarm the body as one.

Shinobi on both sides of the fight stopped and stared at the downed serpent. The Naruto on the downed head's legs gave out and he fell on his butt. Naruto gingerly pulled his right fist out of the snake's skull, wincing as he realized that several of his hand bones were broken. Sure he was in pain, but it was a good pain, he would probably go down as the first shinobi to take down a massive summon literally with one hand. The injured blond sighed, smiled, and looked toward the other two heads thrilled at his achievement. But this feeling and achievement were suddenly literally overshadowed by a familiar voice shouting, "Kuchiyose: Yatai Kuzushi no Jutsu (Summoning: Food Cart Destroyer Technique)"

A large cloud of smoke appeared directly over the paralyzed snake and a massive dual sword wielding toad dropped out of the smoke and landed on the snakes' heart crushing and killing the trio instantly; unfortunately, one of the toad's front arms landed on the downed head and onto the injured blond. Naruto's last thoughts would be echoed by the surviving Narutos, "I hate that man."

* * *

Temari and Naruto raced as fast as her body could stand toward her possessed brother and finally arrived, what felt like hours later, to a tree branch overlooking a war zone. The field was full of clones of Naruto in various battle forms: wings, gauntlets, tentacles, etc. surrounding Temari's brother Gaara. Except Gaara didn't look like himself, his protective sand had almost completely transformed his body into the form of a tanuki (raccoon dog), excluding his legs. The sandy red-head threw his Suna Shuriken (Sand Shuriken) toward the swarm of Naruto that were attacking him in every conceivable direction.

The Naruto that had just arrived scanned the battleground taking everything in while commenting on it.

"Oh look, it's my ass of a teammate who seems to be struggling to get back to his feet, must be weighed down by all those weird flame tattoos. And there's Sakura, somehow trapped against a tree by a sand claw. And look," Naruto's head turned facing the complete opposite direction as either of his teammates, "there's something so interesting that I'll be distracted long enough for an attractive blond to hit somebody's ass of a teammate with her heavy metal fan potentially causing brain damage." Naruto stared at the interesting something for a few seconds before turning around and seeing Temari in the exact same position. "Too subtle?" he asked. Temari didn't say anything but jerked her thumb toward Sasuke showing that he was flat on his face with a lump growing out of the back of his head. "Yep, I was right, beautiful and dangerous." Temari again involuntarily blushed at his compliment, but the moment was cut short as the tree they are standing on is struck hard by one of Gaara's Suna Shuriken causing it to topple over. The two blonds leapt out of the tree and into the adjacent one before focusing back on the battle.

Naruto's clone army swarmed around the possessed red head, some dodging his frantic swings while others weren't so lucky, both pleasing and angering Gaara as he believed he has killed his enemy until it goes pop. Some of the clones moved in close and struck at Gaara with tentacles only for Gaara's sand to react catching it on impact and drawing the clone in to be smacked by one of Gaara's arms. Other clones took advantage of this distraction, and struck Gaara's body with their Shocker gauntlets cracking the hardened parts of his armor and automatically triggering his sand defense to rush in to repair it. A small platoon of clones working in concert fired their gauntlets at once sending hundreds of air blasts at Gaara at once. Gaara was forced backward by the combined assault, his armor warped by the pressure waves.

"I will not lose to someone like you!" Gaara shouted, the last syllables of his shout morphing into an inhuman roar that caused the ground beneath him to explode destroying a quarter of the clones. As the dust settled, all those still conscious stared in shock and horror at the monster before them, it was like an artist had carved a massive tanuki out of stone, painted strange black markings all over it, and drenched it in all the malevolence that mankind had ever felt before bringing it to life.

"It finally emerged," Temari whispered, "perfect possession, Shukaku has fully emerged."

"How can I fight him?" the Naruto beside her asked.

"My father has golden sand that he can force into Shukaku's sand to stop it." Temari explained.

"I don't suppose you've got any on you right now?" Temari just shook her head no.

"Great," Naruto said between clenched teeth.

"Sabakukyu! The Coffin of Crushing Sand!" Sand burst from Shukaku's body grabbing onto another quarter of Naruto's forces and crushing them before they had time to react. The surviving clones struggled desperately to defeat the massive beast but nothing they tried did any real damage, even a second platoon of Naruto's firing Shocker's air blasts again only managed to crack Shukaku's front leg for a second.

"Okay, think, think, think, what stops sand. Water…I need a massive amount of water…except there isn't any out here." Naruto paced back and forth beside Temari desperately racking his enhanced brain for a solution as his comrades were being destroyed. "What else?"

"I know that there are some people who heat the sand of Suna's deserts for glass making," Temari offered.

"Yeah but how am I going to make a fire that hot unless….fulgurite!"

"What?"

"Fulgurite, it's a natural form of glass that forms whenever lighting strikes sand!" Naruto explained quickly.

"Do you know any lightning jutsu?"

"No, but I've got something better." Naruto put his right hand to his ear and activated his radio. "All units we need some backup fighting Gaara, get over here as fast as possible. Everybody fighting Gaara switch Shocker gauntlets to mode three, lets bring some energy to this fight!"

"Ryūsa Bakuryū! (Quicksand Waterfall Flow)" Shukaku brought his front paws down hard on the ground causing a wave of sand to erupt in all directions. The assembled Naruto's in the forest quickly changed the modes on their gauntlets.

"Fire!" Every clone's gauntlets let loose with a powerful burst of energy in the form of a beam with rings of energy riding around it. Sand and energy collided and in seconds the land was engulfed in a flash of light. It ended just as quickly as it had started and the results were shocking. The sand wave devastated everything it had touched turning a swath of forest into a miniature desert, except for the section where the clones had gathered to fight, that part of the sand wave had been transformed into one massive glass sculpture that shimmered in the sunlight, momentarily stunning the clones.

"What are you waiting for applause?" The Naruto in command shouted, "Hit him again!" The clone Naruto's regained their mentality and let loose another stream of energy at the sand monster. Shukaku howled in anger as chunks of his body were superheated into glass which quickly fell and shattered to the forest floor below. The great sand beast slammed its tail down onto a group of clones, only for the tail to feel the full brunt of both the clones on the ground as well as several groups of reinforcements that flew in from Konoha, those with Shocker gauntlets riding on the backs of those with the Vulture's wings. The sand tail glowed a burning red as it came down on the clones. The tail destroyed the clones it hit with a loud boom but the cost was high for the sand demon as its once mighty massive tail was reduced to a shadow of its former self, the bulk of its substance had been turned into glass which cooled on the forest floor below.

Temari let out a tiny gasp at both the sight of the massive glass tail and the incredible wave of heat that surpassed even Suna worst days. But then her eyes fell on the head of the roaring beast. "Naruto!" Temari shouted, "Gaara's asleep on the demon's head!"

"Hell of a time to fall asleep," the latest metal armed master answered.

"No, Gaara doesn't sleep," Temari explained emphasizing the word 'doesn't.' "He believes that Shukaku eats him piece by piece as he sleeps."

"Great, so we're dealing with an insomniac on top of everything."

"He must have used the Tanuki Neiri no Jutsu (Feigning Sleep Technique). It's a technique that puts Gaara to sleep and gives Shukaku total control, that's why it's been attacking so wildly. If you can wake Gaara up, Shukaku's body will collapse."

"Sir," one of Naruto's clones broke in over the radio, "twenty five of us are in the air awaiting your orders."

"Air Squadron," Naruto ordered into his radio, "Gaara is on top of the sand demon's head go after him, if we wake him up the demon will collapse." The newly arrived clones that still had their Vulture wings activated dove down to strike the red head and wake him up. Unfortunately, each of the flying doubles who got close to Gaara were pulled out of air by Shukaku's living sand and into Shukaku's body to be crushed by the pressure within.

"It's no good sir," one of the clones reported over the radio to the Naruto near Temari. "Every time one of us gets close, the sand destroys them. Any ideas?"

"Why won't you all just die!" Shukaku shouted. Naruto thought as he watched his clones dodged the mad tanuki's small waves of sand that ripped apart the landscape, or blasted the large waves that were unleashed turning them into glass before they could strike.

"The flyers can't get to Gaara because the Shukaku can sense them coming with its sand…we've got to get rid of the sand. Our blasters can take away chunks of the armor, but he just regenerates. We destroyed its tail, but lost a lot of fighters…and he's recreating his tail as we speak. He's got to have a limited amount of sand…we just have to destroy more sand than he can move to restore. But we can't…unless!" Naruto's eyes widened as all the pieces clicked into place. "All units, maximum power to the gauntlets…fire at will!"

"No, you could kill him!" Temari shouted as all of the pieces fell into place in her head also. If even one of those energy blasts hit Gaara head on, it might just vaporize him or possibly worse, trap him within a superheated cocoon of glass cooking him to death while suffocating him. A surge of sisterly love overcame her fear and hatred of the demon inside her brother and the pigtailed wind mistress swung her fan in a desperate play to stop the army by stopping its commander.

Unfortunately, Temari's heart overrode her head preventing her from realizing that her target had four extra arms, arms that chose that instant to defend their owner wrapping around the fan and her arms immobilizing her before striking her gently but firmly enough to knock her down to the branch of the tree she was on without causing serious injury to the kunoichi. As the arms let go of her, Naruto spared her a sideways glance, taking his eyes off of the massive pillars of energy that sprang from all over the ground. These pillars struck the Shukaku harder than any of their predecessors making the beast bellow louder than ever before as its body was being liquefied against its will.

"I'm sorry," Naruto whispered before he disappeared. Temari wanted to shout at him, wanted her body to obey her and work, wanted anything else to happen but what was happening. Shukaku disappeared in one massive burst of light which momentarily blinded Temari, her eyes filling with tears of pain and sorrow. A moment or two passed before Temari opened her eyes and looked on a drastically different scene than the one she left. Naruto's clone army, once proud and tall were all collectively on their knees or sitting in exhaustion and all looking up at the deformed glass statue that was once the body of the one-tailed tanuki.

Suddenly, Temari's eyes were drawn to the edge of the battle field where several of the Naruto's had just gone up in smoke. Temari scanned for what could have caused the sudden destruction of the clones when her eyes found what they were looking for…a young man in a black body suit swiftly moving through the army with a damaged wooden puppet clearing the clones in front of him. Temari was confused as to why Kankurō would start attacking the clones, sometimes she realized surprised with his own fists if his puppet Karasu had failed to destroy them. She was confused until she charted where his path would take him and her eyes fell on one lone clone standing tall and looking down on a red head. Temari, filling with new hope and dread, forced her body up against protest and grabbed her fan from where the tentacles had placed it beside her before diving off the tree while riding her now open fan. She quickly glided down to the forest floor and struck the nearest clone in the head with a devastating kick, dispelling it instantly in a plume of smoke.

* * *

A moment earlier, during the lightning barrage…

"This is a stupid idea," Naruto muttered to himself as he flew through the air to charge Gaara. He felt a bit guilty about having to attack Temari, but she had attacked first and it really wasn't her fault he might still accidentally kill Gaara. Naruto had leapt into the air and the precision that only large amounts of practice can bring, retracted his Octavius arms back into himself and re-released his wings so that he could reach Gaara faster. The blond braced himself as he dodged fragments of glass that exploded off the howling tanuki, a few striking him and cutting through the bodysuit leaving thin red streaks. Seconds later Naruto found himself with feet of the sleeping Gaara, the sand around him turning into glass at an alarming rate.

"Really stupid idea," Naruto repeated as he rammed Gaara in the gut as hard he could with a flying tackle, latching onto and dislodging the red head and sending them both spiraling to the ground below.

"No!" Shukaku roared in anger and desperation, its body ironically losing its integrity while become harder than ever before as it was turned into glass. "It's not fair, I just got out again!" With these final words, Shukaku collapsed and solidified simultaneously, the end result being a massive glass statue of a melting tanuki. The clone army ended their attack, and collapsed on either their knees or butts. Maintaining the beams for that long and with that much intensity had drained their chakra reserves to the point where they lucky that they hadn't poofed out yet.

As Gaara regained consciousness, he found himself lying on the ground and staring up at Naruto Uzu…no Octavius-Smythe, Gaara corrected himself. Naruto was just staring at him; arms at his sides, each arm covered in metal blades or feathers and behind him was the deformed glass statue of Shukaku.

'Shukaku was defeated…I lost, I couldn't kill him, so that means…I will cease to exist.' Gaara thought to himself frantically and then he started straining his muscles as he crawled backward away from his enemy. "I will not cease to exist! I won't! I refuse!" Naruto started walking toward him, still staring at Gaara, filling Gaara with panic and fear like he had never felt before.

"Do you know what the difference is between the two of us Gaara?"

"D…Don't come near me!"

"I have conquered my demon, while you have become a slave to yours. Kyuubi promised me nothing and I never gave the Kyuubi anything. You on the other hand, killed whenever your 'Mother' wanted you to and I can only assume that by 'Mother' you meant old Glass-Face behind me. You obeyed its commands, like a slave would a master." Naruto's voice was loud and mocking in Gaara's ears before it suddenly dropped to a whisper. "I on the other hand, ordered my demon to obey me and when it denied my commands I took revenge. And now, the Kyuubi no Kitsune feared demon fox that toppled mountains with a swish of its tails, that destroyed thousands of lives, that killed the famed Fourth Hokage is no more…nothing but a bad memory. I destroyed it; I ripped its mind apart from its body and left nothing but an empty shell for me to draw power from. I am my demon's master; you are your demon's slave."

"Stop it!" Gaara groaned, his head throbbing in pain. "Stay away." Naruto turned his head slightly to the side and glanced out the corner of his eye as memories from destroyed clones started to filter in.

"It's ironic how alike we are, both of us deep down are scared little boys looking for love. The difference is that I had nothing and became desperate for any sort of love, to the point where I became what I thought people wanted me to be and denied what I thought I should be to the point of burying away all my hate. And then suddenly, I stumbled into a family, one who accepts the real me that I would have denied and the me that I let others see and lets me decide what is worth keeping and discarding about myself. You on the other hand, have had everything I wanted in a family from the very beginning and yet you have taken such painstaking measures as to drive away anyone who would care about you if given the chance. Although," he added looking back at Gaara and to Gaara's confusion smiling at him, "I do not believe that they have abandoned you as much as you have them. Your brother and sister are exhausted and yet they are giving everything they've got to fight my entire army, for you. Muttering about how they have to protect you, their brother."

"They're just doing it for my father." Gaara countered. "He wouldn't want his weapon to die unless it was because he ordered it to happen."

"Possible, but unlikely…Temari is crying as she fights. Loyalty to the state rarely evokes such emotion; it's more likely that at least Temari still really cares about you deep down, despite what your demon and probably your father would have her believe. Now its time to choose Gaara, will you live to kill at the whims of your demon and die today, or will you kill your demon's will and live for yourself and possibly the beautiful blond that's crying over you?"

"That's my sister you're talking about," Gaara found himself saying, for the first time thinking about his sister without apathy or anger.

"Sounds like you've made the right choice," Naruto replied, still smiling as he retracted his wings and held his hand out to Gaara. The sand wielder took the offered hand and pulled himself to his feet with Naruto's help. The two let go of each others hands and Naruto took a few steps backward toward Konoha. "When this has all blown over, come seek me out and perhaps we can find a way to help you defeat that raccoon-dog that tortures you so." With these words, Temari and Kankurō finally burst through the army's lines and took positions between their brother and the boy who might still harm him.

"Take one more step toward our brother and it will be your last," Kankurō threatened glaring at Naruto.

"Temari, Kankurō, stand down, its over," Gaara told them. "We don't have to fight him anymore."

"You sure about this Gaara?" Kankurō asked cautiously, not taking his eyes off of Naruto for a moment.

"Yes," Gaara answered, "we are no longer enemies."

"I don't even know why we are fighting in the first place," Naruto said, "Well aside from the whole invading with Orochimaru's band of mutated idiots. I suppose a better question would be, 'Why are you guys working with them?'"

"Suna's economy is in trouble," Temari explained, getting a confused look out of Kankurō for her casual revelation of Suna's entire purpose for invading. "Most of the people who would hire us for missions are instead hiring from Konoha, we lose money which will cause us to lose power, and eventually we will fall from our place among the Five Great Shinobi Nations."

"So its politics…I hate politics," Naruto groaned as snippets of lessons from the digital copy of the Kingpin replayed in his mind before they were cut off by a report from one of the Narutos still in the village.

"All Narutos, Orochimaru is in full retreat, try and stop him or any of his minions if you can." Naruto turned his full attention back to the three Suna genin who were looking at him. "Looks like the war is over, take Gaara and get out of here as fast as you can. Gaara, think about what we talked about and what other people are offering you."

"I will, Smythe." Gaara replied with a slight nod.

"But there's one more very important thing you must know," Temari interrupted sweetly as she walked toward Naruto stopping mere inches from his face.

"What's that?" Naruto asked, confused at why she had gotten so close. Temari smiled and then suddenly Naruto felt her fist connect squarely with his gut doubling him over with the strength that only an angry woman could possess.

"That's for leaving me on the tree branch, and this," she explained calmly cupping Naruto's left cheek in her right hand and giving him a quick peck on his other cheek, "that's for everything else you did right, especially saving my brother." Temari turned around and walked back toward her brothers…and Naruto could swear that if it weren't for his coat obscuring the view he'd see Temari swaying her hips as she walked away.

"You don't have to keep reminding me you're dangerous Temari, I never doubted it for a moment." Naruto said as he struggled to get back to his full height. "Oh, and you can keep the coat, it looks better on you anyway." Temari didn't say anything but just looked over her shoulder and smiled before she and her brothers ran off back toward Suna.

Their journey was silent, until they were definitely out of earshot of Naruto when Gaara said the most difficult phrase to say sincerely in any language to his siblings. "I'm sorry."

Meanwhile, Naruto watched the departing forms of the Suna trio before sending a message over the radio. "All Narutos, Gaara isn't a threat anymore. If you see him, let him and his siblings go in peace. And don't be too rough with the guys from Suna; it's not their fault they got dragged into this fight. Oh and I gave Temari our coat to wear."

"WHAT?" a couple dozen Narutos asked over the radio at once.

* * *

In a small side room of the stadium, two men sat waiting, listening to the sounds of fighting outside. The first was a middle aged man with pale blond hair while the other was a stocky brown haired middle aged man. Both carried briefcases that they held as if they were made of gold. The fighting suddenly stopped and somebody knocked on the door three times. The pale blond man opened the door and smirked at the sight of two Narutos on the other side.

"Mr. Beck, Mr. Gargan" one of the Narutos said smirking back at the two men inside. "Your path has been cleared, if you'll follow us, please."

"All right," the blond who responded to Beck answered. "But Gargan and I found something interesting."

"Yeah," Gargan added, "The boss'll be very interested in getting his hands on these babies." Gargan gestured to a pair of rectangular boxes in the corner of the room whose lids had been cracked by some sort of punch.

* * *

_Author's note: I don't know if any of you realized this by I have actually made Sasuke both stronger and weaker that his canon self with his defeating Temari outright followed by Temari's kicking of his butt respectively._

_For those of you who don't get the reference in the title…the Metallica song that applies to Gaara is "Enter Sandman," good song, I've got the version from Live in Ludwigshafen. Which makes me think, we've got that for Gaara and "Master of Puppets" that could work for Kankurō anybody know a Metallica song that work for Temari, at least in title?_

_The glass making stuff, I looked that up on Wikipedia. And yes I know I used a technique that Gaara didn't use until later, but who's to say Shukaku didn't know these techniques and Gaara just took them from him?_

_After you take a moment to review this chapter, please, I've also got another Doctor Who one-shot and an Atop the Fourth Wall one shot I've written that I think are both pretty good. Thank you everybody who has reviewed so far and will review in the future._

_And now for the moment you've been waiting for…the omake, no actually two omakes inspired by the review of the last chapter by Jlargent who said,_ "I can actually see Naruto playing Flight of the Valkeries while doing this."_ Let's see what would happen then…_

Omake: What Jlargent has wrought.

From the skies an air force of Vulture armor clad Naruto's flew down, ready for battle: their eyes steely and determined, their armor reflecting brightly in the sky, their musical instruments beginning the opening chords of Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries"…wait, what?

"What's that in the sky?"

"It's a bunch of kites!"

"No, it's a flock of large birds!"

"No, it's a flying orchestra."

"Ahhhh!" SMASH! CRASH! POOF!

"It's a falling orchestra! Run for your lives!" And so, Naruto Octavius Smythe and his clones drove off the invading forces of Suna and Oto…by falling out of the sky clutching musical instruments. As it turns out, the Four Violet Flames Battle Encampment technique was capable of stopping anyone and anything…except for musical instruments. Orochimaru was defeated after all four members of his Sound Four were knocked out by a pair of tubas and a couple cellos and the Snake Sannin himself died after being squashed by the original Naruto holding onto a pipe organ.

Omake: What Jlargent has wrought v.2.

From the skies an air force of Vulture armor clad Naruto's flew down, ready for battle: their eyes steely and determined, their armor reflecting brightly in the sky, their onboard speakers beginning the opening chords of Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries"…wait, what?

"Hey boss?" one of the clones asked the original Naruto in the middle of their dive.

"Kind of in the middle of something," Naruto replied.

"This is Flight of the Valkyries right?"

"Yeah."

"And Valkyries were warrior women of Norse legend right?"

"Yeah."

"So, wouldn't it make more sense if it was a bunch of women fighting the bad guys?"

"I suppose from a technical standpoint, but that would assume…" but the original Naruto was cut off as the clone sent a communication to all of the other Naruto clones and within a few seconds the clones all shouted in unison, "Orioke no Jutsu!" A second cloud of smoke obscured the sky before being broken by the original Naruto flying downward, followed by a couple thousand blond girls, naked except for the wings coming from their arms and the smoke which covered their…private areas. Every male that looked up reacted in the typical anime way: being violently thrown backward by their own bloody nose. This left the fighting between the kunoichi of Konoha and the fighting prowess of Tayuya and Temari…because for some reason Suna and Oto only brought two females to that fight.

In the end, Konoha won easily, the body Orochimaru was possessing turned out to well…lets say bat for the other team, and the Snake Sannin's body flew back into the Battle Encampment before the Sound Four reacted and was destroyed. Then the Sound Four reacted and three…well three and a half depending on how you count Sakon & Ukon. Sarutobi, the old perverted Hokage, flew backwards, fell off one level of the roof and landed on another and broke his hip.

As for Naruto's popularity, well it stayed about the same…the ladies were mad at him for using that jutsu, but at the same time glad that it saved the day and gave them a chance to beat up perverts without much difficulty.


	6. Chapter 6: From the Rooftop to the Ramen

**Chapter 6: The War to Settle the Score Pt.2: From the Rooftop to the Ramen Stand**

No matter where a shinobi was born, all of them were the same deep down inside, such as training to improve themselves and…this sounds very familiar. Why? Because we're now back to the same point in time that started the last chapter.

Throughout the city, Narutos clashed with Suna and Oto's shinobi forces, the buildings around echoed with the sounds of combat. In the market area, a pair of Narutos squared off against a pair of Oto's cannon fodder…I mean ninja. One of the ninja was skilled at throwing kunai and was using this ability to hold back his mechanized opponents, while his opponent prepared to launch his own attack. Unfortunately, the duo were so focused on the Naruto in front of them that they hadn't noticed a third one had landed silently behind them.

One of the third Naruto's tendrils caught the Oto ninja's arm before he could throw a kunai and that Naruto caught the ninja in the jaw with a vibrating punch, breaking the jawbone and knocking the Oto ninja out.

His partner managed to shoot a fireball but one of the Narutos countered with an air punch, causing the ball to separate into several smaller fires that hit some of the surrounding stands and caused them to ignite. The air punch continued on, striking the surprised ninja hard enough to send him flying through the door of a nearby hardware store. The trio of Narutos followed their enemy into the store. A few minutes after the hardware store was invaded, it exploded, showering the surrounding area in rubble.

* * *

Deep down inside of himself, Orochimaru would have to admit that the invasion of Konoha would in the end mean nothing to him. That's not to say that the snake sannin would be apathetic toward victory or defeat but rather the ultimate fate of Konoha meant nothing in comparison to the moment he was in right now. The snake sannin stood face to face with Sarutobi Hiruzen, his ex-leader, his ex-sensei, his ex-friend, and in the part of him that still resonated human, his ex-father figure. But this was how things had to be for the two of them, Sarutobi would always value the rights of the individual and Orochimaru would always put the betterment of himself first.

Yet, despite the grave nature of their fight, Orochimaru couldn't help but smile as he fought with his old sensei. Sure, Sarutobi wasn't as fast or as strong as he used to be, and Orochimaru enjoyed taunting him about it and his advanced age, but that was nothing new. What made Orochimaru smile was the fact that this life & death struggle was playing out like one of their many spars from over the years: attack, counter attack, banter, and then show off their incredible techniques such as Sarutobi's combo of _Doton: Doryūdan_ and _Doton: Doryū Taiga _or Orochimaru's ninjas using _Four Violet Flames Battle Encampment_.

Orochimaru had copied that jutsu and several others from the Forbidden Scroll just in case he would ever need something like it, and in a few moments he would unleash the potentially most powerful technique that the scroll contained.

The Naruto flock dove down through Konoha striking down whoever they could, either as individuals striking individual invaders or groups going after the giant snakes or chasing Gaara. One Naruto flew downward back toward the arena, circling the purple cube while studying it with his HUD.

"Okay," Naruto mused as he read the data he collected, "the cube is made of the chakra of the four individuals in the corners, that much is obvious, but they've found a way to harmonize their chakra. Odd, I didn't think that was possible. But the consistency of the chakra keeps changing almost as if…the chakra is moving! That's it! The chakra moves from user to user harmonizing the individual's chakra with the collective's almost instantaneously. And this harmonized chakra is moving so fast and violently underneath the surface that any foreign chakra that touches it, either through a jutsu or a person is instantly destroyed." Naruto slowed down his looping around the cube scanning it more in depth with each loop.

"So, the chakra is constantly moving around the walls and ceiling, so where is it weak…wait, it needs all four producing and moving chakra equally to maintain the field, so I should take out one of them but which one? Thin guy with the grey hair, large guy with the Mohawk, scowling girl with the hat, or the guy with six arms that makes him look like a spi….we have a winner." Naruto landed on the roof between his target and the ANBU who were standing there watching.

"Uzumaki," the center ANBU stated, "We have the situation under control, leave now and aid Konoha."

"And a bang up job you're doing," Naruto replied not looking at the ANBU, "but I am aiding Konoha by saving the old man." Naruto began walking toward his target.

"Uzumaki, I order you, get away from here."

Naruto turned around and glared at the ANBU, "The name is Octavious-Smythe and I don't answer to you. Now if you want to be useful, than either get down there and help Kakashi and Guy fight or shut up and be ready to attack when this barrier goes down." Naruto turned around again and walked to stand face to face with the six armed ninja.

"Less than a month on the job and I find my own Spiderman to fight. So tell me Spiderman, can you do whatever a spider can? Spin a web any size? Do you catch your enemies just like flies? To you, is life a great demand?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" the spider like ninja growled.

"Sorry, just a little ditty about another Spiderman my family knew. My name is Naruto Octavious-Smythe, what is yours?"

"My name is Kidomaru." Kidomaru replied, eying Naruto with suspicion.

"Well then Kidomaru, would you mind taking this barrier down?"

"Hell no."

"Didn't think so," Naruto's wings and talons retracted and reformed the Shocker's gauntlets and Dr. Octopus's tentacles, "I just thought I'd be polite and ask before I hurt you." Naruto fired a concentrated blast of energy at the roof where the corner of the shield sat, leaving a massive hole.

"It didn't work," Kidomaru taunted.

"No, it did work," Naruto said pleasantly before he strolled forward dropping through the hole. For a few seconds, nothing happened and then Kidomaru heard a thud followed by a cracking sound and suddenly one of Naruto's tentacles burst through the tiles of the roof and latched onto Kidomaru's throat. The tentacles retracted as quickly as it had appeared, pulling Kidomaru down with it to the ground and triggering a chain reaction which broke the roof beneath his feet causing him to fall through it.

Just as suddenly as Kidomaru disappeared, he reappeared flying out of the hole that Naruto originally made and landing just outside the arena wall and crashed to the ground surrounding the stadium. As the spider-like shinobi crashed outside the barrier, the blond, mechanized shinobi created another hole in the roof inside the barrier, landing near the Third Hokage.

"Hi old man, is this a private fight or can anybody join in?" Naruto asked.

"Naruto!" Sarutobi shouted, "What are you doing here?"

"I came to ask if you wanted to go to Ichiraku's for a bowl of ramen or six, what's it look like? I'm here to help you." Naruto replied sarcastically, "Your ANBU are just standing there doing jack squat except telling people to not help you as they twiddle their thumbs."

"You shouldn't have come here Naruto," Sarutobi warned.

"Like I could let you fight him alone," Naruto countered. As the two bickered lightly, the large man with the orange Mohawk known as Jirōbō looked over his shoulder to face Orochimaru.

"Lord Orochimaru," Jirōbō grunted just loud enough for his master to hear, "We can't keep this up much longer." As if hearing his statement, the barrier pulsed angrily as sections grew thicker in width and others thinned to the point where gaps would form, especially on the roof.

"Hold on as long as possible," Orochimaru ordered, "Looks like I'll have to speed up our reunion." Orochimaru flew through hand signs which caused two coffins to rise from the ground.

"One and Two," Sarutobi read aloud. "No, it can't be…we must stop them!" Sarutobi threw a shuriken as fast as he could and flew through his own hand signs turning one shuriken into almost a thousand with the Shuriken Kage Bushin no Jutsu, Naruto raced forward after them. The myriad of shuriken struck and lodged themselves into the two coffins. A split second after the impact, Naruto rammed the 'Two' coffin as hard as he could with his gauntlets cracking the wood and toppling the coffin. Naruto ricocheted off of the 'Two' coffin and grabbed onto the 'One' coffin with his tentacles, closing the opening lid and drawing it toward him so he could punch it too with enough force to momentarily imbed his right fist in the wood.

"Naruto, behind you!" Sarutobi shouted. Naruto turned his head and saw a third coffin – labeled 'Four' for some reason had risen behind him. The tentacles reacted on their own and latched onto the sides of the 'Four' coffin and threw it into the air. Naruto pulled his right fist free of the 'One' coffin and used his left fist to fire an energy blast which struck the 'Four' coffin and knocked it into one of the barrier walls, igniting the box in purple flames.

'For some reason, I'm enjoying this.' Naruto thought.

Sarutobi looked at the burning coffin out of the corner of his eye and could swear he saw the back of a man with long blond hair wearing a white jacket before it too was engulfed in flames.

"NO!" Orochimaru shouted in a cross of anger, frustration, and shock. His carefully laid schemes…

Convincing the daimyo of the land of Rice to let him found his own village;

Setting up the physical village of Oto and all of its hidden bunkers;

Locating and convincing missing and rouge ninja, unaffiliated ninja clans, and individuals with unique talents to relocate to Oto, or just outright kidnapping them in some cases;

Successfully meeting with the Kazekage in secret and convincing him that the only way to improve Suna's standing in the world would be to invade Konoha;

Killing the Kazekage and replacing him, a near impossible task on its own with the Kazekage's skills;

Organizing all of his and Suna's ninja into patterns of attack that would successfully invade the village;

Learning the incredibly difficult Edo Tensai jutsu and locating genetic material of the three previous Hokages;

All of it…now, FOR NOTHING!

'No,' Orochimaru thought, 'not for nothing.' The Snake Sannin quickly regurgitated the famed Kusanagi blade he hid within himself and brandished it with a flourish. "Let's settle this!" Orochimaru raced forward, blade at the ready to slice into his sensei's flesh, only to be cut off by an air blast from Naruto nearly striking him in the gut and causing him to stop his attack.

"Sound Four, attack that blond!" Orochimaru ordered as he focused his attention on Sarutobi who had taken Orochimaru's distraction as an opportunity to summon the Monkey King Enma and have him transform into his Adamantine Staff form.

Jirōbō immediately heeded his master's command and charged at Naruto to deliver a punch using Jirōbō's Arhat style of taijutsu. Naruto leapt backward dodging the punch by a hair; unfortunately this put him in the path of an attack by the strange grey haired ninja who also attacked Naruto with a punch that became three fists attacking at once. Naruto's tentacles reacted automatically to the incoming threat by coiling themselves between Naruto's body and the incoming fists, absorbing the blows before uncoiling themselves pushing Naruto and the grey haired ninja apart in opposite directions.

"Do I hear music?" Naruto thought to himself as he could have sworn that he heard the sounds of a flute playing, but these thoughts were cut off as a shadow appeared over Naruto's head. Naruto turned to face the shadow and was shocked to see that it belonged to a massive humanoid in a black jumpsuit wielding a massive club that was bearing down on the still in air Naruto.

Number 6 reacted on its own, latching onto one of the roof tiles to Naruto's left and pulling Naruto away from the oncoming attacker. The giant in the jumpsuit struck the roof smashing several of the tiles and leaving its own hole in the roof. Naruto's relief at not being smashed with the club was short lived as he caught sight of another massive humanoid bearing down on him with a pair claws. Naruto barely dodged the downward slash of the landing clawed humanoid that then lunged at Naruto to cut him open. Naruto simultaneously leapt backward while using Shocker's gauntlets to fire an air blast at the charging humanoid sending it back the way it came and Naruto further away.

However, Naruto's backward flight put him straight in the path of a kick by the third humanoid that was bound in a straight jacket. Another of Naruto's tentacles reacted this time pulling their wielder out of harms way momentarily as the bound humanoid used the momentum of its landing to push itself toward Naruto to attack with a barrage of kicks that Naruto could barely avoid by constantly moving backward. Suddenly, Number 6 lunged at the bound kicker and wrapped itself around the oncoming ankle, and then with a swift crack of its whip-like body, it flung the kicker toward one of its fellow humanoids.

Just as the kicking humanoid was released, Jirōbō lunged forward with a clothesline like attack that would have taken Naruto's head off if Naruto hadn't dove out of the way. The pattern continued for several minutes, one of Naruto's opponents would attack and Naruto would be forced to dodge putting him in the path of another opponent's attack, forcing Naruto to dodge into another opponent's attack, in a seemingly never ending spiral of barely dodging attacks. Naruto noticed three things as the fight progressed: One, the orange and grey haired opponents had apparently stopped in the middle of the fight to get tattoos on their faces and arms; Two, since getting their tattoos the orange and grey haired fighters had gotten stronger, actually connecting a couple times with glancing blows; and Three, the music Naruto heard during the fight came from the red haired girl who was still in her starting point, away from the fight, and somehow she too was covered in tattoos.

Suddenly, the fighting stopped as Naruto took a half step back in preparation to dodge the next attack, but found that most of his foot touched nothing but air.

"It's been fun trash," Jirōbō taunted. "Now give up and we won't hurt you too badly."

"Sounds good," Naruto replied, "But how about this, you give up and we won't hurt you too badly."

"'We'?" Jirobo mocked. "You and what army?"

"You don't know how long I've been waiting for somebody to ask me that," Naruto replied chuckling. Before anybody could say anything, from seemingly out of nowhere, a Naruto appeared and connected with a solid gauntleted left jab to the right side of Jiboro's face knocking the bigger man off of his feet. Jiboro's crash to the ground was like a starter's pistol signaling that it was "Open Season" on the Oto shinobi as dozens of Naruto's dropped from the skies to attack.

* * *

The Ichiraku Ramen stand was built in an excellent position for business, located directly on the main road that stretches from Konoha's main gate to the Hokage's Tower. Travelers on the road could easily spot the stand and enter for a bite of the best ramen in Konoha. Unfortunately, this prime business location made it an easy target for the invaders as both Ichiraku's found out when a pair of invaders evaded Konoha's shinobi and rushed into their stand.

"Well, look what we've got here," one of the duo said with an evil grin on his face and a hungry look in his eyes, "Food and something to entertain ourselves with."

"Stay back," Teuchi warned with a hard look in his eyes and a pair of cleavers in his hands.

"Or what old man?" the other one taunted, "You'll make us some ramen?" His partner stepped forward and the old chef responded with speed much greater than somebody his age should have been able to perform and slashed the attacker across the face before the Oto ninja could block, causing the ninja to stumble back clutching his face.

"Now you'll get it old man," the unscarred ninja raged. Both invaders started to attack but were stopped by a metal clawed tentacle grabbing their throats.

"Nobody touches my friends," Naruto growled as his tentacles slammed the duo together with a sickening 'CRACK' and threw them over his shoulder into the path of another Naruto's air blasts. Simultaneously, a dozen enraged Narutos in the surrounding area converged on the duo and proceeded to show them what the phrase "beaten to within an inch of their life" really meant.

"Naruto!" Ayame shouted happily as she threw herself onto her savior and hugged him with every fiber of her being.

"It's okay Ayame," Naruto said softly and gently, patting her on the back. "Nobody tries to harm my precious people and gets away with it."

"Thank you Naruto," Teuchi said graciously, "but if you don't mind my asking, how'd you get so big and muscular?" Ayame also wondered about this, but was too wrapped up in being comforted by her surprisingly muscular friend.

"All the benefits of your ramen diet came in at once," Naruto joked. "Now don't worry, I'm going to stay here and protect you two."

"Don't worry about us Naruto," Teuchi said. "You've got to protect Konoha."

"It'll be fine," Naruto replied. "There are a lot of me's out there right now." Teuchi wanted to argue, but one look at his daughter told him that until the invasion ended, there would be no safer place than beside their best customer.

* * *

The same could not be said; however, for a trio of Suna ninja who had cornered Naruto in an alley.

"It's been fun kid, but this is the end of the line. Any last words?" the lead Suna ninja asked as all three of them readied themselves for the fight.

"Yeah," Naruto replied. "I'm just distracting you so she can stab you."

"What?" one of the Suna ninja began asking, when suddenly out of the shadows of the alley, a flurry of kunai flew forth impaling two of the unsuspecting Suna ninjas and taking them down. As the third ninja turned to catch sight of the new opponent, a purple haired woman appeared in front of him followed by a painfully intense stabbing sensation in his crotch, causing him to pass out almost instantly.

"You know technically its not stabbing if you throw the kunai," Naruto commented as he walked toward his crouching partner. "And was it really necessary to use a snake to bite him in the crotch?"

"Nope," Anko said happily as she rose to her feet and smiled as she faced her partner. "What's that make the score?"

"Six to you, five to me, and eight team-up knockouts," Naruto grabbed Anko with his right arm and jerked her behind him while simultaneously firing an electric Shocker blast with his left at an Oto ninja at the other end of the alley who was about to throw a kunai of his own. The blast caught the Sound ninja squarely in the chest sending him flying backward into a wall across the road. "And that makes it six to both of us."

Anko wrapped her arms around Naruto, pushed her generous assets into his back and put her head on his shoulder. "You know for a life or death struggle, this is the most fun I've had in a while."

"Even more fun than licking my cheek before the Second Stage?"

"Yep, although I think the only way this could be more fun is if I got to lick up your blood." Naruto ignored Anko's request and said, "Come on Anko, let's go find some more cannon fodder for us to beat up."

"Yay!" Anko cheered as she let go of Naruto and actually skipped off down the alley. Naruto just chuckled at Anko's antics before kicking the head of a Suna ninja that was starting to get up, knocking him out again. "Five to Six to Nine," Naruto said to himself smiling before chasing after Anko.

* * *

Meanwhile, the battle on the roof of the stadium was going far from well for the invading forces, what had started as a one on one fight between student and teacher and been turned into a two on one fight, and then turned into a one on one fight and a six on one fight…now the fight had changed yet again into a massive battle royal with the Hokage and a flock of Narutos on one team and Orochimaru, three of his Sound Four, and three giants.

Orochimaru and Sarutobi continued their fight, focusing almost exclusively on each other, letting their partners focus on their opponent's partners. Yet this fight was merely the eye of the storm that was taking place on the roof, because everywhere else the battle wasn't solely one on one affairs but random and chaotic, with Narutos attacking one opponent then backing off to change their angle of attack toward a different opponent. The tables had turned for the Sound ninja, instead of them attacking Naruto and forcing him on the defensive, now his clones were forcing them on the defensive. Unfortunately, the Sound ninja weren't just dodging like he had been forced to, but rather counterattacking…and effectively if the occasional cloud of smoke after a clone popped was any indication.

'Did that grey haired one just grow an arm out of his back?' the lead Naruto asked himself as he processed one of the popped clones memories, 'Okay, these guys are definitely better than the ones in the street, then again if they were protecting Orochimaru they'd have to be.' Naruto sighed as a clone popped after Jirōbō crushed its rib cage with a powerful knee to the gut. 'I have to end this fast."

"All units on the roof," he ordered through his radio, "New plan, switch to talons and let's try draining these ninjas of their chakra, piece by piece if we have to!"

"Yes sir!" the Naruto flock responded, and snapped into action instantly, forgoing their Shocker gauntlets in favor of Vulture talons. Naruto clones attacked the three giant humanoids en masse diving or lunging at them in teams and latching onto the giants with their talons and draining them as fast as they could. The giants attacked the clones wildly in a frantic effort to get rid of the leeches on their chakra until drained of their strength, the three giants popped in clouds of smoke.

Tayuya growled as she saw her summons defeated, and narrowly dodged one of the Naruto's talons connecting with her body. "What the hell you bastard?! You trying to cop a feel? The girls here know you're so small…Aaah!" Tayuya's next words were cut off as one of the Naruto's successfully latched onto her shoulder, right on top of the source of her curse seal, and caused her to glow (See the 90's Spiderman cartoon) as the talon started draining her chakra.

"You shouldn't knock it," the Naruto latching onto her quipped, "one touch from me can really change a person." The process ended and Naruto let Tayuya collapse as the tell tale glow of absorption faded glow faded away the Narutos around her looked at her curiously.

"I'm no expert," one Naruto began, "but I thought she was supposed to turn old and wrinkly." That Naruto looked back down at Tayuya, looking the same as when she was forming the barrier.

"Yeah, and where'd her tattoo go!" The last word ended in an exclamation of pain as the Naruto who was draining her chakra fell to his knees, clutching his stomach.

"Are you alright?" the first Naruto asked as he took a step toward his comrade in pain. The downed clone suddenly roared as it looked like his skin started cracking as the same black marks that were on Tayuya erupted from the collar of his attire and covered all of his exposed skin. The now tattooed Naruto stopped roaring and quickly rose to his feet.

"Never better," tattooed Naruto (hereafter referred to as Tattoo) replied, his eyes gleaming wildly. "In fact, this is the best I've ever felt in my life. I need more of this chakra!" Tattoo grabbed onto Tayuya's arms with his talons, activating the absorption process again…but nothing happened. "Why isn't it working?!" Tattoo released and relatched onto Tayuya, with no effect. "Why isn't she an old wrinkled bitch?"

"I'm not sure," the first Naruto answered, eyeing his brother warily, "Our talons work by drawing life force or chakra out of the target."

"Damn it, I know that crap!" Tattoo shouted, getting more visibly angry. "What's the point?"

"The draining of their life force causes them to temporarily age…and the talons are programmed with a limit to prevent killing the target…so the only way the procedure wouldn't work is if….she had a separate chakra system!"

"Where would a person keep a separate chakra system?" another Naruto asked.

"The tattoo!" the first Naruto shouted. "What if it's not a tattoo but a seal?!"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Tattoo asked/shouted.

"Seals are a lot like circuits, their form determines their function, and a seal uses chakra like a circuit uses electricity. Maybe the tattoo is really a seal for a massive amount of chakra and when it spreads out it becomes its own chakra network." The first Naruto explained.

"A storage seal for chakra, so it's a lot like our seal." The second/another Naruto added.

"So any bastard with one of those tattoos has this chakra in them?" Tattoo asked, his eyes moving to track the other two standing members of the Sound Four, as they fought off Narutos.

"Yes."

"That's all I need to know!" Tattoo raced toward the fat tattooed ninja, eager to absorb more chakra.

"He's not acting right," the second Naruto said as he watched the tattooed one running away. "Why?"

"Maybe that curse seal is more like our seal than we realize?"

"You think there's a mind behind the chakra?"

"I don't know of any chakra storing seals that don't involve a consciousness."

"We better play it safe then. All units on the roof, go back to the old plan…don't absorb their chakra; it'll mess with your mind!" The second Naruto orders into the radio.

Tattoo closed the distance to Jirōbō in a few short seconds, roughly pushing away any Narutos in his way. "Hey you fat sack of crap!" Tattoo shouted, "Where the hell did you and your damn friends get your ink!"

Jirōbō dispelled the closest Naruto with a viscous knee to his chin followed by a punch to the face and then spun around to face the voice that swore like Tayuya. Jirōbō's eyes widened in shock at the sight of his new opponent, "How did you get Lord Orochimaru's mark on you?"

"Orochimaru's mark, huh? Maybe it's his chakra I absorbed. Looks like I've got a bigger fish to fry than you tubby, and that's saying something." Tattoo taunted.

"If you want to fight Lord Orochimaru, you'll have to go through me first!" Jirōbō shouted.

"Fine by me, lard ball, I could use a pick-me-up," Tattoo replied before charging again. Jirōbō raised his arm to block a swipe by Naruto and countered with a knee to the gut. Tattoo staggered backward a couple of steps, clutching his gut. Jirōbō took advantage of the blond's distracted state by going for a palm thrust that would've taken off Tattoo's head, if it weren't for the fact that at the last second Tattoo moved his head out of the way. Jirōbō's hand passed by Tattoo's head harmlessly and was then captured by one of the tentacles. In a judo-like move, the tentacle took Jirōbō's momentum and used it to throw the large man over Tattoo's shoulder, slamming him into the ground without letting him go.

Jirōbō quickly recovered, leaping to his feet and grabbing onto the tentacle. With a great tug, Jirōbō pulled on the tentacle taking Tattoo off his feet and send him flying straight toward Jirōbō's other fist. Less that a foot away, Tattoo suddenly straightened himself out and caught Jirōbō's punching arm with a talon.

"Aaah!" Jirōbō cried out in pain as his chakra started to drain. Tattoo used his other talon to grab onto Jirōbō's neck to speed up the absorption process. With a final groan, Jirōbō's tattoo disappeared and the large man passed out.

"Huh, the damn clones couldn't handle him and I took the bastard down in a few seconds…this chakra is incred….aaaah!" Tattoo doubled over again as a new wave of power rushed into him, and more tattoos covered him moving like snake or a chain made of triangles. Tattoo jumped to his feet quicker than he did last time, his face looked more tattoo than flesh. "Time to fight the head bastard!" Tattoo said eagerly, hunting for his prey.

* * *

Sarutobi grimaced as he narrowly dodged being cut by the famed Kusanagi Blade that not only had Orochimaru apparently found, but was also keeping hidden inside of a snake…that he kept hidden inside of his stomach. 'Orochimaru always did have weird ideas for storing weapons,' Sarutobi thought to himself, as he took a couple steps back before expanding King Enma's Adamantium staff form. Orochimaru blocked the attack using the Kusanagi's edge, causing Enma to screech in a combination of pain and rage.

With Sarutobi's staff/summon distracted, Orochimaru quickly raced forward getting inside Sarutobi's guard, and delivered a viscous kick to the gut, winding the Hokage and potentially cracking several ribs. Sarutobi staggered backward clutching onto his ribs.

"You have gotten old, haven't you?" Orochimaru asked smiling at his weakened ex-sensei. "I've never seen you strain so much. It's so pitiful you know, even you, he who was hailed as the god of the shinobi cannot defeat old age." Orochimaru raised his right hand to his face and with a quick tug and a ripping sound like cloth being torn, the Snake Sannin tore his face off to reveal the face of a young girl beneath it.

"You…you…" Sarutobi's mind struggled to understand what he was looking at, until he remembered the night his errant student left Konoha and the horrors that Orochimaru left behind. "You completed that kinjutsu, didn't you?"

Orochimaru chuckled at the look on his opponent's face, "Yes, this immortality jutsu allows my soul to connect to this world forever, essentially reincarnation myself by moving my soul into a new body and gaining possession of it. The only reason I disguised myself as my old self was because I thought I'd let you feel nostalgic about the past."

Both warriors continued to stare at each other, practically ignoring the battles raging around them.

"It's sad really," Orochimaru commented, "you've grown old and destitute. You will die here in the ruins of your village. A village which will provide me with a new younger body soon enough."

"You want Sasuke Uchiha's body!" Sarutobi realized.

"Well after he gets older," Orochimaru admitted. "I did enjoy our final chat together, Sensei. As thanks for all you've done for me over the years, I think I shall let you die," the stolen skin of the young girl's face rippled and paled as Orochimaru spoke until it transformed into a perfect duplicate of the Sannin's original face, "looking into the face you knew best."

"Orochimaru!" Tattoo shouted, drawing the Sannin's and Hokage's attention, both looking at the newly arrived Naruto in surprise, "Is this power yours?"

"Naruto?" Sarutobi asked, "What has happened to you?"

"Be silent old man," Tattoo snapped, "this is between me and the snake."

"Kukuku," the Snake Sannin chuckled, "I don't know how you received my seal Naruto, but yes it is mine."

"Your chakra is in it correct?"

"Yes," Orochimaru answered, hesitantly because he was surprised at the supposedly dead-last's insight, but then he noticed the look in the tattooed Naruto's eyes and recognized it as the same look that anybody who craves power possesses. "If you join me, I can give you all the power you could want. I could even give you your own mark."

"Naruto don't listen to him, he will lie to you and use you for your body!" Sarutobi shouted.

"Great," another Naruto quipped who took a position behind Sarutobi, "you get a tattoo and suddenly only freaky people are interested in your body."

"I don't want a piece of your power," Tattoo declared, "I want it all!" With that shout, the tattooed Naruto attacked Orochimaru, tentacles straining to latch onto the snake so that the talons could too.

"What's going on?" Sarutobi asked the Naruto who had moved to stand beside him, not taking his eyes off of his ex-student's fight.

"Somehow absorbing a tattoo has caused that clone to go crazy." Naruto answered.

"Absorbed? How?"

"We've got a piece of technology that acts like that chakra leeching jutsu, only when he used it on one of his guards, the tattoos disappeared off of them and formed on the clone. He absorbed another guard's tattoos and now he's after Orochimaru."

"Naruto listen," Sarutobi ordered, "I have a jutsu that might stop Orochimaru, but I need a few minutes to prepare, can you distract him?" Naruto's reply was interrupted by a shout from Orochimaru as Tattoo caught his knee with a tentacle, bending it in a way it shouldn't be bent. Orochimaru reacted to Tattoo's attack by releasing a stream of snakes from one arm that forced Tattoo to jump backward to dodge taking a snake to the jugular. Tattoo converted one of his talons to the gauntlet form and fired off an air blast to keep Orochimaru off-balance.

"Somehow I don't think that'll be a problem," Naruto stated. Sarutobi nodded and began forming the necessary hand signs. Enma in his staff from saw the initial signs Sarutobi was using and his eyes widened in shock, "Sarutobi, you can't be serious! That jutsu is too dangerous!"

"Be quiet Enma," Sarutobi ordered, "I have no choice."

Tattoo charged the off-balance Sannin and succeeded in pinning his arms to his torso after a brief struggle.

"Very good Naruto," Orochimaru chuckled, ignoring the pain in his ribs, "but there's something about snakes you should know." Orochimaru opened his mouth wide and what looked like fingers reached out and latched onto the sides of the mouth. The leader Oto threw his head back as the fingers became hands. Just as suddenly as the hands appeared, they disappeared in a large black blur that came out of Orochimaru's mouth and landed feet away, revealing it to be another Orochimaru, free of cuts and bruises. "They can shed their skin."

"Neat trick," Tattoo stated, pitching the shed skin of Orochimaru.

"So's this one," Orochimaru's hands quickly flew through the hand signs, "Fūton: Daitoppa! (Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" A burst of wind just like the one that sent Naruto flying in the Forest of Death burst from Orochimaru's hand, sending Tattoo flying. Tattoo's tentacles latched onto the roof, keeping Tattoo from fly off of it.

"Now try one of my tricks!" Tattoo shouted, converting both gauntlets and unleashing bursts of energy from both arms forcing Orochimaru to cancel his attack. Tattoo landed on the roof between the fallen boxes Orochimaru had summoned earlier. His tentacles wrapped around the two boxes and threw them at the Sannin. Orochimaru narrowly dodged both projectiles, which flew off the roof and crashed into one of the private viewing boxes in the stadium below. Orochimaru responded with a stream of fire sending Tattoo scrambling out of the way.

A middle aged man with pale blond hair and a middle aged man with brown hair looked down at the two boxes that crashed through the room they were waiting to be picked up in.

"So these are the boxes Orochimaru was so interested in summoning," the tall blond stated, looking them over.

"Should we look inside?" the brunette asked. The blond nodded as he carefully pushed one of the lids open. Both men looked in and their eyes widened in shock.

"Well this is an interesting development isn't it Mr. Gargan?" the tall blond asked.

"Yes it is Mr. Beck." The brunette answered.

"Let's get these somewhere safe for the boss." Mr. Beck suggested.

"Agreed," Mr. Gargan said before putting a finger to his ear, 'This is Gargan, Beck and I are moving, requesting pick up."

'I hate to admit it,' Orochimaru thought, 'but the brat is a talented fighter, despite his enraged state. This is actually a lot like sparring with Jiraya when we were younger.' Tattoo connect with a left jab that caught the Sannin in the shoulder…numbing it slightly, 'Only the brat is better.' Orochimaru leaned his upper body backward to dodge a swing by one of Tatto's tentacles, 'And that body, with that body I could perform even more experiments, handle dangerous substances easily,' Orochimaru's mind processed all of the things that he could do with Naruto's body, '…maybe even restrain Jūgo physically…I must possess his power!'

The Snake Sannin let Tattoo get in close and Tattoo took advantage of it to his Orochimaru in the stomach with a vibrating punch. Suddenly, Orochimaru dissolved into mud, briefly trapping Tattoo's arm. Orochimaru then reappeared behind the tattooed one biting into his neck.

'Now I've got…wait this isn't right!' Orochimaru thought/realized before he released his bite, jumping back and spitting out a foul taste. "You're a clone!" Tattoo spun around, freeing his arm and bringing it to his shoulder to feel the bite mark while blasting with the other arm. Orochimaru sidestepped the blast and charged in close swinging the Kusanagi to deflect the tentacles ending by coming in close and bearing down on Tattoo's head with a viscious downward slash. Tattoo blocked with his free vibrating gauntlet, somehow knocking the sword away. Snakes burst out of Orochimaru's opposite sleeve; Tattoo used his other hand to knock the snakes out; Orochimaru's sword arm recovered first and released the most dangerous snake in his possession, who bit right into Tattoo's jugular. Tattoo brought his first arm back to his throat to grab onto the snake and crush it with his vibrating fist.

The Snake Sannin's eyes widened in surprise as the tattooed Naruto didn't pop after being bitten, but Orochimaru did notice that several of the tattoos had faded away. "Kukuku," Orochimaru chuckled, "You are full of surprises aren't you Naruto?" Orochimaru's mind raced through all of the possible ways the clone could have survived.

"Your chakra is mine!" Tattoo shouted, lunging at Orochimaru again, the two scuffling until finally Tattoo was able to restrain the Sannin's arms and legs with his tentacles. Tattoo's gauntlets shifted back into talon form, gleaming as he brought them toward the Sannin's face. Out of the corner of his eye, Tattoo saw one of Orochimaru's hands move and then, inches from a meal of chakra, Tattoo's body was racked with intense pain burned through him. Tattoo looked down and saw the blade of the Kusanagi poking out of his chest, with a scream of rage, Tattoo finally dispelled.

Orochimaru breathed a sigh of relief that was cut short as new tentacles restrained his arms, legs and hands belonging to two Narutos.

"Now old man!" one of them shouted. Orochimaru spun his head in time to see Sarutobi charging at him with a sickly purple glow around his right hand.

"No!" Orochimaru shouted, recognizing the technique from the Forbidden Scroll and actually panicking as he struggled to get free.

"Dokuno Sutairu: Chakura Kuchikukan! (Poison Style: Chakra Destroyer!)" Sarutobit shouted, just feet from connecting, when something whizzed past his face, narrowly missing him but burying itself into one of the Narutos' stomach, dispelling him, leaving only an arrow behind. The leader of Oto reacted instantly, recalling Kusanagi to his hand and with one motion stabbing the other Naruto in the stomach, dispelling him too and freeing Orochimaru. The pale Sannin leapt out of Sarutobi's path as the aged Hokage willed the purple glow forward. As Orochimaru dodged, the glow lanced forward, missing the body but glancing off of his left elbow.

"I didn't think you'd be willing to use that technique," Orochimaru stated as he felt a burning sensation start to grow in his arm.

"To stop you, I'm more than willing to use forbidden jutsu," Sarutobi countered, the purple energy fading away.

"You should have let me kill you Sensei," Orochimaru taunted. "Your death would've been far less painful."

"I could say the same," Sarutobi countered. Before the Sannin could retort, Sarutobi heard another whizzing sound coming toward him, before he could react, a pulse of air rushed past him colliding with the whizzing and turning it into a thud.

"Old man, Spiderman's shooting arrows at you!" A new Naruto behind Orochimaru with a gauntlet raised shouted. Sarutobi turned, keeping his body facing Orochimaru while letting him catch a glimpse of the six-armed ninja on the edge of the roof. Orochimaru used this minor distraction to form handsigns and release a stream of flames at the Hokage. Sarutobi dodged the flames using Enma as a pole vault.

Orochimaru canceled his attack as the burning in his elbow had intensified and was starting to numb the appendage. 'Damn it,' Orochimaru swore, 'If I keep fighting, I might lose my arm entirely…I must escape.' "Sound Four to me!"

Naruto readied himself to attack the Sannin when memories from nearby defeated clones rushed to him letting him know that Orochimaru's grey haired guard had somehow managed to wake his teammates up and all three were on their way.

In a burst of speed, the Sound Four surrounded their leader. "Retreat," Orochimaru ordered bitterly. All five ninjas of Oto leapt into the air with Kidomaru at the back. A pair of still winged Narutos chased after them, but were caught in a web from Kidomaru's mouth, forcing them to collapse to the ground and disappear in a puff of smoke, just as the Sound Four and Orochimaru disappeared.

"All Narutos, Orochimaru is in full retreat, try and stop him or any of his minions if you can." Naruto ordered into his radio as he ran to Sarutobi's side. "You okay old man?"

"Yeah," Sarutobi replied, flexing the fingers of his right hand. "But I wouldn't want to go through this every day." Sarutobi turned his head to look at the village, taking in the sight of the smoke billowing from some areas. "Good job Naruto," Sarutobi said smiling as he put his left hand on Naruto's shoulder.

Before Naruto could say anything, a message came out over the radio, "All Narutos, Gaara isn't a threat anymore. If you see him, let him and his siblings go in peace. And don't be too rough with the guys from Suna; it's not their fault they got dragged into this fight. Oh and I gave Temari our coat to wear."

"WHAT?" a couple dozen Narutos including the one on the roof asked over the radio at once.

"What happened?" Sarutobi asked. "One me has apparently learned that Suna was dragged into this…somehow, he didn't explain. And that me gave away my trench coat, I liked that coat."

Sarutobi laughed at the glimmer of the old Naruto shining through, "I think after helping save me, the least I can do is buy you a new coat. But right now the important thing is…the village is safe."

* * *

(End of Chapter)

* * *

_Okay, so you might be wondering, "Hey with all of his new abilities how come Dark Patrician's Naruto didn't kill Orochimaru like every other Naruto with extra abilities in a fan-fic seems to do?" My answer: Honestly, of all the bad guys…Orochimaru is kind of my favorite. Think about it, every other big bad in the series is apparently born with this incredible powers and techniques, mostly in the form of dojutsu. Orochimaru on the other hand was presumably born without any of his abilities and instead had to work hard to learn and develop them. And he's got the least complicated reason for being a bad guy: he wants to know every technique and he wants revenge on Konoha for ruining his experiments. That seems like a far more legitimate reason for evil than working for world peace through pain or mass hypnosis via the moon. And I don't know how far many of you have gotten in the series but Tobi's motivation…really disappointing in my opinion. So Orochimaru gets to stick around…at least for now. Also, if he dies now then I've got too completely rewrite chunks of several future arcs and well…that's more of a headache. Besides, I've got more interesting events to change. But enough of my rambling, lets finish on something happier, the omake._

Omake: The Best Defense…

"All the benefits of your ramen diet came in at once," Naruto joked. "Now don't worry, I'm going to stay here and protect you two."

"Don't worry about us, Naruto" Teuchi said. "You've got to protect Konoha."

"It'll be fine," Naruto replied. "There are a lot of me's out there right now, but what's far more important is protecting the best ramen stand in the world!" Naruto's hands formed the familiar cross sign as two dozen clones formed just outside the stands curtain. Wordlessly the clones stood shoulder to shoulder around their creator's favorite eatery. Debris from a nearby explosion rained down on the stand and the Narutos sprung into action blasting away at the rubble that flew toward them. Unfortunately, as a small rock got past the defense line and came within three feet of hitting the stand.

"Not good enough," Naruto said through gritted teeth, "This calls for better measures!" Once more he formed Kage Bushin who quickly moved into place standing on the shoulders of the first bunch. A kunai came with fifteen feet of the defenders, more Kage Bushin were made, smoke wafted in from a nearby fire, more Kage Bushin were made, Ayame sneezed, a hundred Kage Bushin were made until finally, the Ichiraku Ramen Bar was surrounded by a ring of steel…or rather a ring of steel armed Naruto, twenty Naruto high and twenty Naruto thick. Not so much as a housefly could enter to ramen stand now.

And the piles of dead houseflies outside the ring of clones proved it.


	7. Chapter 7: Family Affair

_Greetings, enjoyers of Naruto/Spider-man crossovers! Its me, the narrator that sometimes shows up at the beginning of chapters! Last time, we did the time warp again and saw how the other half of the Naruto's spent their Chunin Exams. The Ramen Stand was saved, Naruto sang, Sarutobi didn't die, and Anko walked around half naked! Of course she does that all the time but that's why we like her! Oh and a quick note to the guest reviewer Monkey: You seem to forget, Kyuubi was going to let Naruto die to get his peace, kind of hard to be sympathetic to somebody who will get everything they want when you die, sure canon Naruto might have, but this isn't canon Naruto. Also, he couldn't absorb Doc Ock because him and Smythe didn't download themselves into Naruto, think of the versions in his mind as avatars in a video game._

_I don't own the source materials, but I'm guessing you knew that._

_Alright, enough of that...get ready my readers and prepare for..._

Chapter 7: Family Affairs

Sarutobi and Naruto entered the Hokage's office and the aged and battered Hokage took his seat behind his desk.

"Now then Naruto," Sarutobi began, "please tell me how you received your impressive new abilities." Naruto stayed silent, his eyes roamed over the office and his strange new appendages swayed almost hypnotically, the claw-like ends pointing in different directions. "Naruto?" Sarutobi asked.

"Sorry Old Man," Naruto said smiling as he finally looked at the Hokage, "I thought you said we were going to talk alone."

"We are."

"Then who are the four other people hanging around your office?" Sarutobi looked around realizing that Naruto was talking about the ANBU that were stationed in his office and that each of his claws was pointing at one of them.

"You could detect them?" Sarutobi asked. "How?"

"I'm just that damn awesome." Naruto replied smiling wider.

"ANBU!" Sarutobi ordered, "Dismissed!" Four of the masked shinobi appeared in front of the Hokage.

"Sir with all due respect," the one on the right began, "Uzumaki..."

"Octavius-Smythe," Naruto corrected.

"Is an unknown at this time," the ANBU finished.

"I trust Naruto as much as I trust any of you ANBU," Sarutobi explained.

"Which might not be the smartest thing considering the do-nothings that were on the roof with you," Naruto commented.

"They will have a chance to explain their actions or lack thereof," Sarutobi explained, locking eyes with Naruto before looking at the ANBU again, "As for you four, as I said before, Dismissed."

"But sir..."

"Dismissed!" the Hokage said gruffly, letting just a little menace enter his voice. The ANBU quickly marched out of the office, closing the door behind them.

"A little angrier and I think you'd need to get a new carpet," Naruto joked. Sarutobi smiled and guestured toward a chair which Naruto sat in.

"Now then, tell me your story Naruto."

"Long story short, I made a mistake trusting the perverted toad," Naruto began, "He made me use up all my chakra and threw me down a chasm. I just barely survived hitting the bottom."

"How?"

"I used a mass of Shadow Clones as a pillow."

"Only you could pull that off," Sarutobi said still smiling, "So did the Kyuubi give you the chakra to survive?"

"No, the fox wanted to die, something about being alone, the chakra was the last of mine. Anyway, somehow I made it into the river and floated downstream for a while until I was resuced and nursed back to health by Octavius and Smythe."

"I thought you had died," Sarutobi sadly and quietly stated, his smile now gone.

"Why?"

"It doesn't..."

"Old Man," Naruto said seriously, "Trust is a two way street, you wanted my story now tell me yours." Sarutobi looked saddened at Naruto's picking up on this train of thought and decided to answer.

"Jiraya was in my office days ago when I asked him how your training was going."

"You can do that? Damn, I wish you had checked up months ago, Kakashi's taught me jack-squat."

"I could still look into that for you Naruto. Anyway, Jiraya was making excuses before the top toad appeared in my office and told him that your name had gone black on the list of summoners. The only way that could've happened is if you had died."

"I did die," Naruto said softly.

"What?" Sarutobi asked startled.

"My heart stopped beating for a couple minutes after I crashed to the bottom of the chasm. If it wasn't for my new...family, I wouldn't be here today."

"I'd like to meet them and thank them for saving you."

"That's kind of impossible right now, the only way you could get to them is with my new skills."

"Could they come here?"

"No, they wouldn't leave their home." Sarutobi opened his mouth, but Naruto cut him off, "And no, I won't tell you why, its not my place to say."

"Naruto, I hate to say it but there's a chance they could be a threat to Konoha."

"And Konoha could be a threat to them." Naruto replied matter-of-factly, "Frankly, I'm more protective of them after everything they've done for me."

"Just because they saved your life doesn't mean they deserve your complete loyalty."

"Just because I live here doesn't mean Konoha deserves my complete loyalty," Naruto countered.

"How can you say that?" Sarutobi asked shocked.

"I suppose in a way I've been thinking about that for a while." Naruto walked to the window and looked down on the village, "Do you know what the safest place in Konoha was during the invasion?" Sarutobi shook his head silently. "Ichiraku's Ramen Stand. I've been receiving intellegence from the clones out there. A lot of them made their way to the stand and surrounding blocks. Hell! A Ring of Steel was actually proposed and a lot of them wanted to form it. I realize now that its them and you and Iruka that gives me a reason to keep fighting for Konoha, the rest of them just aren't worth it."

"Naruto, please give it time, things will change." Naruto spun around and stared Sarutobi in the eyes.

"But only because of today, because they saw that I have power that could be useful to Konoha." Naruto's voice started to rise in volume with each word. "But any praise they give me now will never balance the years that they glared at me in hatred because the Fourth Hokage couldn't come up with a better plan than sticking the fox in a newborn." Naruto sighed and then his voice dropped back to normal volume. "So what happens now with the summoning?"

Sarutobi was briefly stunned with the abrupt change in topic but recovered quickly enough. "Once the name on the contract turns black the connection is severed. You won't be able to summon toads again unless Jiraya or one of the toads gives you the contract to sign again."

"Very well, I shall pass, I'd rather avoid more connections with my two time would-be executioner."

"Two time?"

"One, he threw me over the cliff and I died. Two, he crushed me with a toad while I was standing on the three-headed snake."

"I'm sure the second time was an accident." Sarutobi offered.

"How do you tell a shadow clone from the original?" Naruto asked.

"Well you can..."

"Without touching it in any way," Naruto interrupted. Sarutobi paused as he struggled to answer before finally stating, "Without a dojutsu or sensitive sensor abilities, you can't."

"Exactly, the toad sage had to have seen 'me' on the snake's head and yet he summoned a toad right on top of it and me. Do you know what its like to have a multi-story toad land on top of you? I do, and that could've potentially killed all of the Narutos in one shot and we wouldn't be here talking about it. So you can understand if I'd rather have nothing to do with him." Naruto finished with disgust in his voice.

'Jiraya,' Sarutobi thought bitterly, 'You idiot, your godson wants nothing to do with you.' Sarutobi then spoke aloud, "I can't promise you'll never cross paths because you may end up working together in the future."

"As long as there's someone there I can depend on and trust to watch my back, I'll manage." Naruto tilted his head slightly. "I should go," he stated, "one of the clones is calling."

"Anything wrong?"

"No," Naruto smiled, "he wants help moving the remains of the giant glass tanuki."

Sarutobi chuckled, "I don't think it'll fit in your apartment."

"I know, that's why he's trying to convince the others to take a wall off the building to fit it in." Both men chuckled at the image this statement generated. "Do you mind if I fly out of here?"

"Go ahead," Sarutobi watched as wings grew out of Naruto's arms. Naruto opened one of the large windows in the room and stepped out onto the ledge. "Later Old Man!" Naruto said happily as he jumped off the ledge. Sarutobi raced to the window and looked out just in time to see Naruto rising up and flying past his window. The aged Hokage watched Naruto disappear in the distance before he walked back to his desk.

"Naruto," Sarutobi said to himself, "You are going to be something spectacular. But what the hell am I going to get you for a coat? Something with a fox? No, I don't think he wants to be reminded of it. Maybe something like his dad's? No, I don't think we should advertise any connection. Maybe a...AAAH!" Sarutobi's train of thought was derailed by a terrible spasm of pain in the fingers of his right hand reminding him of his recent fight. "I'm getting too old for this job."

* * *

Naruto looked down on Konoha as he flew over it, the village as a whole had survived, although the area near the entry hole the snake made and a good chunk of the downtown area where the other Narutos fought were badly damaged or destroyed and would need to be rebuilt. The missing chunk of wall would also need to be replaced unless the council desided to put another gate there. Either way, government beuracracy would probably mean that hole was going to be there a while.

Naruto glided over the village walls and the surrounding forests, confident that he couldn't be tracked until he eventually came back to the chasm Jiraya threw him down. The buzzcut blond dove down into it following the same route he fell the first time, except without the threat of death. He eventually until he arrived at the base/spaceship and entered his new home...and immediately collided with another Naruto walking out.

"Oh, there you are," the Naruto that was walking out began, "We've been waiting for you. Come on our Vaters are waiting." Both Narutos entered and saw the mass of Narutos working under Smythe's direction. Smythe turned to see the two enter the room. "Good all of the Narutos are here. We will resume work later, for now dispell!" The assembled Narutos went up in bursts of smoke. When it disspelled all that remained was one lone Naruto, lying on the floor.

I awoke to find myself facing the sterile, metallic grey ceiling above my recovery station/brain chair. "You'd think that with a couple hundred copies of me walking around the base, at least one of us would have put up a poster or something to make the ceiling less drab."

"Well unfortunately the space agency frowned on astronauts putting up posters of women in bikinis or prints of dogs playing poker so there aren't any of those on board. Plus that sort of thing wasn't exactly a priority when we added our own tech to the stolen shuttle," I heard Smythe explain. I turned my head to look at the assembled members of my family all looking concerned. "We were wondering when you'd get up."

"How long was I out?"

"Almost an hour," Smythe answered, "apparently even with our help, your mind wasn't ready to take in so many different sets of memories.

"Yeah, the past few hours are kind of a blur. I'm not sure which memories are mine and which are a clones."

"Interesting, Smythe commented, "you'd think that the original memories would be strongest, but the sheer mass of memories have overwhelmed them.

"Yeah..." I paused as I processed the stray thoughts and feelings from my...selves and then I smiled as I felt the phantom sensations of Anko, Temari, and Ayame.

"Remember which one you were?" Smythe asked.

"No, but I know which ones I'd rather have been."

"A girl kissed you right?" Shocker of all people asked.

"One kissed, one hugged, and one kind of drapped herself on her back," I admitted.

"Gentlemen, our little boy's all grown up and discovering girls," Shocker teased while wiping fake tears from his mask's eye holes, causing me to blush and my family to stgart laughing and smiling.

"Ah, you're just jealous that I've got girls throwing themselves at me and you're stuck here with these Recycle Bin rejects." As my family continued to laugh, I climbed out of the chair. "So what was I up to?" I asked.

"Sorting our new supplies, counting the money, that sort of thing." Otto stated. As he spoke, the memories associated with these events filled in the details. Apparently, several of my...selves played Robin Hood in the stores that would routinely overcharge me...not an obvious three times the cost for one-third the quality, but a few extra cents per item adds up. And tragically these stores all seemed to fall victim to the various explosives that the enemy ninjas carried with them. Shame isn't it?

The money came through a combination of loose bills in the stores, apparently standard evacuation rules for the stores included "Grab the cash register," and through betting at the Chunin Exams. Before showing up for my fight, I made three special clones: Beck, Gargan, and Fisk, named after Mysterio, Scorpion, and the Kingpin respectively.

Each of the clones had a very important mission, take my original money, mix it with their cloned money and use it to bet on me to win the first round. Sure, it was counterfeiting, underage gambling, and I was betting on myself but I'm a ninja and I live with a bunch of "super-villains," so following the law doesn't bother me as much as it used to. Although I wonder if this ever gets found out, will I be banned from being a ninja like Pete Rose was in baseball. Who decided to put baseball facts in my head? I'm getting of track.

But my clones did more than that, Fisk apparently found Neji and had a very interesting conversation, I found myself smiling again at a new potential ally.

"Now I recognize that kind of smile," a cultured voice stated as its owner stepped forward. A giant, bald man in a white suit with a black soul stood before me, "That's the smile after a well-executed plan. My namesake was kind enough to find me and show me a copy of his memories, well done Naruto, a performance mixing lies and twisting the truth all done with sincerity. Your actions were worthy of the title of Kingpin."

"Thanks Uncle Wilson, perhaps that could be a career path for me 'Kingpin of the Elemental Nations.'" Before I could continue our discussion, I remembered what Beck and Gargan found, "Where are those coffins Orochimaru summoned?"

"In the cargo hold," Fisk answered.

"Well than lets see what Orochimaru dug up." I replied. In the hold, I found the two coffins among the rest of my newly gained goods. I carefully removed the lids to look down at the people within. One had a boy in it, the one that fired air blasts if I remembered correctly, looked like a doll that somebody had removed parts from and replaced with the parts from another doll. His left arm and right leg were both the size of a full grown adult, there were some bulges in his skin like the bones in his body were too big for his skin and patches of skin looked like they were grafted on, especially on his face.

The other coffin had a girl in it, the one that Shikamaru beat, and she looked more or less the same as she had then, except for the fact that her forearms looked like they belonged on an older man, half of her hair was spiky and grey, and her torso looked swollen, like she was a stuffed toy that was overstuffed.

My eyes locked onto her face especially the small metal disk on her forehead and then I looked at the disk on his forehead.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A portable scanner," Otto explained and then gestured to a computer monitor which lit up with pictures of the two brains. "Scans show that both subjects brains are in a comatose state."

"What about the swapped body parts? Are they transplants?"

"Now that is fascinating," a new voice rang out with a British accent. A man or perhaps half of a man stepped forward. The right side of his body looked like a normal guy, but his left side drew your attention. His entire left side was pale green and virtually hairless, his left hand and foor were claws and his left eye was yellow and larger than the right one.

"What are you talking about Herbert?" Otto asked Herbert Landon, renowned geneticist and victim of his attempt to destroy mutantkind.

"Their genetic structures have been completely changed but only in certain spots. In the male's case," Landon guestured and the monitors changed to show a computer graphic of beneath the male's left shoulder, "the blood flows from the heart to the arm but when it reaches the dividing point the white blood cells are slowed down its DNA is being rewritten," the monitors showed a sequence of DNA coming apart and being put back together. Fortunately both the host and whoever the grafted pieces came from shared the same blood type, but there is a problem." The monitors changed again to show a white blood cell attacking the walls of the blood vessel. "The white blood cells and antibodies are being changed too slowly, so they are attacking the 'foreign' cells around them and slowly destroying the blood vessles. This is happening all over the body where a replacement part is located."

"What about the girl?" I asked.

"Most of the body is intact except for some of her hair, her forearms, and her internal organs."

"Does she show signs of breaking apart?"

"Not to the degree of her counterpart, but her liver and lungs show considerable damage. If I had to guess, I'd say that whoever's organs are inside of her, they belonged to an older man who drank and smoked considerably."

"How is this exchange possible?" Otto asked.

"Well, there aren't any signs of surgery." Landon explained, "I ran a genetic comparison and while the teenagers aren't related, the transplanted seem to belong to close relatives, possibly brothers."

"Brothers?" I wondered out loud. "In coffins labled 'One' and 'Two.' Why does that sound familiar?"

"I think I may have an answer," Smythe called from across the room as he started walking toward us. The monitors flickered and changed again showing the insides of the coffin and the black lines painted inside. I believe that this coffin is full of seals. I don't know what they do, but I think they may have something to do with it." Before anybody could say anything, I heard a loud cracking sound and the monitors flashed red and cut to one of the brain scans now showing the brain exploding in color.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"The female is regaining consciousness," Otto explained, "But these scans are showing a tremendous amount of neural activity."

"More than 10% of the brain?" Smythe asked.

"That is a popular misconception," Otto explained, "In fact when a person thinks, brain activity..." I ignored my tentacle weilding father's explaination and walked to the sleeping girl in the coffin. She looked the same but at the same time her closed eyes seemed to flutter a bit.

"Miss?" I asked, "Are you awake?" Her red eyes snapped open searching around until they locked onto me and then they narrowed.

"Miss?" she repeated mockingly. "Has Kumo failed to teach you the difference between men and women?"

"Kumo?" I repeated confused. "Why would you think you're in Kumo?"

"Let's not play games," she spat, "You look young. Kumo must be desparate if they're using you to interrogate or guard me."

"Interrogate?" I repeated, "Why..."

"And if you are an interrogator, you must not be a very good one. Here's some free advice," I was suddenly swept off my feet and the girl jumped out of the coffin and pinned me down while holding a blade made out of...was that water...to my throat. "When you interrogate a ninja, be sure to restrain them and block their chakra, especially when that ninja is Tobirama Senju, the Nidaime (Second) Hokage of Konohagakure!"

"Nidaime..." my mind realed with the declaration backed by a blade of water formed out of thin air, a feat that only one person in history could perform, "How is this..." And then I froze. 'Coffins labled One and Two, genetically related brothers, if this is the Nidaime Hokage then the other coffin must be...' "Shodai (First) Hokage." In my shock, I accidentally said the last words out loud.

"What about my brother?" she/he asked, but before I could answer a set of tentacles latched onto her arms and pulled her off of me. I quickly rose to my feet and prepared to aid my vater's Octobot. She/he twisted around and came face to face with the open casket of her/his partially formed brother.

"Hashirama..." she/he gasped and looked at the inside of the casket. "Those seals...Edo Tensai...how...who...aaaaah!" With a gasp of pain she closed her eyes and her head fell limp.

"What happened?" I asked my family.

"I don't know," Herbert finally admitted, "unless this...Edo Tensai has the ability to change the neurochemical composition of the brain as well..."

"Orochimaru!" she shouted, cutting Herbert off, "Why? Why are you doing this? We are loyal!" Just as suddenly as she started shouting, she stopped as if she just realized where she was. "What's going on?" She turned her head around until she locked eyes with me and I stared into her angry and confused black eyes. Wait, weren't they red a moment ago? "You, you're that blond brat from the Uchiha's team."

"The name is Naruto, Naruto Octavius-Smythe," I supplied, "And you are?"

"Kin, Kin Tsuchi, where am I?" She looked down at the tentacles restraining her and then back at me, "And what the hell is this?"

"My questions first, you are one of Orochimaru's soldiers although you sounded mad at him, why?"

"The bastard shoved me and Zaku into these coffins and the next thing I know I'm being covered in...something and then I don't feel like myself and then...then I think I was punched in the gut and parts fell off of me and I woke up with you restraining me."

"You don't remember making a water blade or yelling about Kumo?"

"What are you talking about?" Kin asked, looking at me like I was an idiot.

"I think Orochimaru's fight affected the jutsu," I paused realizing that where I hit the coffin matched where she said she was hit. 'But the punch didn't go all the way through,' I looked at the visible interior lid and saw the inside was badly cracked and the cracks ran through the seals. 'What if the cracks caused the seals to react differently like broken electronics?'

"What are you talking about?" Kin repeated, angrier.

"Your former boss used you to somehow bring back the Second Hokage and your partner to bring back the First," I explained.

"How?"

"Something called Edo Tensai, I don't know how it works but it did work and when he used it during his fight with the Old Man, the coffins you were in were damaged and..." Naruto's explaination was cut off by Kin suddenly shouting in pain, "AAAAHH!" Her head dropped and snapped back up, red eyes glaring again.

"You!" She, or rather the Nidaime shouted, "What have you done with my brother!" A ball of water burst out of her mouth, I dodged it avoiding having my head shot off. The Octobot quickly latched onto her face and released a strong dose of knockout gas, rendering her unconscious instantly. I looked at the downed girl/Hokage hybrid, "I don't know how this happened, but I will try to fix it."

_Author's Note: All right, that's a wrap. Thanks for reading, and please, please review. Following or Favoriting the story is nice, but I enjoy hearing your opinions._

Omake: Truth is Stranger than Fiction

Deep within their hidden ship, Naruto is performing routine maintenance on the Octobot under the careful direction of Doctor Otto Octavius.

"Nein!" Otto shouted, "You must turn it to the left."

"I am turning it to the left," Naruto countered.

"Your other left."

Suddenly their banter is broken up as a portal opens above their heads, dropped a box, and closed just as quickly as it opened. Naruto carefully opened the box finding it full of issues of Spiderman and volumes of Naruto manga.

"Reading break?" Naruto offered.

"Sure, why not."

ONE READING SESSION LATER

"Sasuke wants to be Hokage?"

"I put my brain in Spiderman's body?" Both tentacle weilders looked at each other. "Let us never speak of this again."

"Agreed."


	8. Chapter 8: The Set Up (You Need This)

_Greetings fan-fiction enthusiasts and as I post this, Happy Birthday to Naruto! Last time our partially robotized blond reconnected with the Hokage and had to deal with a girl who thought she was the Second Hokage. What new challenges will this girl bring and how will our Iron Blond fight back? The heat will be on! Wait that's Iron Chef, never mind. Anyway, I'll stop yapping and let you enjoy..._

Chapter 8: The Setup (You Need This)

It was a dark and stormy night, I've always wanted to start a chapter like that, the battle for Konoha had seen so many fire and lightning jutsu shot into the air that the air had super heated eventually resulting in a storm...its way more complicated than that but hey if Sasuke could cause a storm with one fire jutsu why not?

Naruto looked at the bank of computer monitors in front of him; the clones had made a complete inventory of what they had...liberated from Konoha and had already begun construction of something he had wanted to build since his vaeter (fathers) had shown him what they had built in the past. You see what a lot of people didn't know about Naruto was the fact that he was actually a great planner, it's just that usually his reasons for doing something were spontaneous and he didn't really have time to plan. But when he wanted to do something, he could come up with brilliant strategies. For example, the painting of the Hokage monument took 6 months of planning plus pulling off a dozen smaller pranks to get supplies and divert everyone's suspicions on his real prank. It's a good story, maybe it'll get told sometime.

"You should get some sleep," a voice stated from the opposite side of the bay. Naruto turned and saw his half-mutated 'uncle' Herbert Landon walking toward him, "You've had a long day."

"Yeah," Naruto agreed, "but I want to finish this before I go to sleep. What about you? I thought everybody had gone into sleep mode for the night."

"The Kingpin asked me to do some programming for him and once I finished that I got to thinking about your girl problems...the one with the split personality not the ones who made out with you. That's your own problem." Naruto blushed a little and Landon laughed at his reaction. "I don't think we can completely purge the foreign DNA from her, but maybe we can take it and use it to make her stronger."

"What are you talking about?" Naruto asked.

"Back on our world there was a device called the Neogenic Recombinator..."

"The gizmo that turned Gargan into the Scorpion."

"Correct, I see you picked up some of Gargan's jargon."

"But I thought it was destroyed and there weren't any blueprints."

"There weren't, but shortly before the launch we were able to find Dr. Farley Stillwell and scan his mind to find the designs."

"Can we build one here?"

"We have or can manufacture most of the parts but there are some things we will need to find elsewhere."

"All right, give me a list and I'll get on it."

"I will...tomorrow. Right now you should get some sleep."

"Give me a few more minutes to finish this."

"You have ten."

"Yes sir." Naruto answered with a smile, glad to have somebody around who cared about his well being.

* * *

At a prearranged rendezvous point, several of Suna's surviving shinobi gathered, tired and sore after their failed invasion, many of them wondered if they'd ever see their homes again and if there were any of Konoha's shinobi hiding in the bushes. As each one arrived, they were studied intensely by a veteran jonin with red eyes who was constantly evaluating their well being and how much of Suna's military could be recovered.

* * *

In Suna, friends and families waited anxiously for word on the battle of Konoha especially how their loved ones and their kage faired.

* * *

In Iwa, Onoki the Third Tsuchikage known as the Fence-Sitter or Onoki of Both Scales, and feared master of the Jinton or Dust Technique pondered his nation's place in the world: how it stood economically, militarily, its reputation among rich clients, and the effectiveness of both of their jinchuriken, Roshi who was far outside the village and Han patrolling its walls obsessively.

Okay I'm lying, in reality the old man was farting as he slept in his bed after taking a dose of pain medication for his bad back. (See, this is what we call filler, everything else will pay off later, but this won't, probably.)

* * *

An Cao, the top ranked general of Kiri's rebellion laid in his bed and sighed contently as he gazed around his Spartan quarters. The war had been going on for months and all of the smart soldiers knew not to leave to many personal items laying around for fear of an attack.

But all that mattered to him was the woman who was wrapped around him. She had basically thrown himself at him since the moment they met but he didn't care. They had done things that he didn't think were even physically possible...even for a ninja...and every single one of them was her idea. He hadn't even heard of a few of them before.

"Somebody's having good thoughts," his partner said, staring at him with her soulful green eyes.

"About you and what you said earlier."

"What I said earlier," She repeated, "was that before the third time or after the seventh time?" she added teasingly as she started tracing patterns with her finger on his chest.

"Before all of that, about what you recommended your cell should do. You're right; your cell shouldn't be put on the frontlines. I'll move Nai's squad and you, Chojuro and the rest of your cell can defend the supply depot, Mei.

"How can I ever thank you," Mei Terumi purred as she began kissing his chest.

"You don't..." An began but was cut off by Mei slinking her way down his body, kissing and talking, "You know, I think I can think of a few ways." An gasped as Mei expressed her gratitude. 'This sure as hell beats reading reports.

* * *

In Kumo, A the Yondaime Raikage scowled as he read the covert report his agents sent regarding the Chunin Exams. They had failed in finding anybody with a Kekkai Genkai who they could easily abduct and bring back to Kumo...well except for an Aburame kid, but their clan is creepy. However, it was the news that there could be a new Kekkai Genkai in Konoha that really angered the muscular kage. Some Uzumaki or former Uzumaki if the change in last name was any indication had the ability to make metal form things like tentacles and wings on him.

"Damn Konoha," A cursed, "like they need another batch of ninjas with special abilities, especially if they found a way to implant abilities into them."

* * *

Tayuya grunted as she felt a hand press down on her curse seal, which felt as sore and tender as it had when Orochimaru first implanted it on her.

"Well?" she grumbled.

"This is fascinating," Amachi, Orochimaru's scientist in charge of underwater research, exclaimed as he scanned her shoulder. "The skin around the seal is red from some sort of irritation but the seal itself looks fine, except for the color."

"What's wrong with the color?" Tayuya asked.

"It looks like something black that's had a lot of dust on it or faded black cloth," Amachi explained. "It could be a form of chakra exhaustion, but I've never seen it on the curse seal before. Of course, I'm not an expert on it, if you want to turn into a man-fish hybrid, I'm your guy. I'd say have Lord Orochimaru look at it soon, otherwise you're fine physically. Go get some rest."

Tayuya grunted something like an okay, got off of the examination table and left the infirmary. As she left she came face to face with Jirobo leaning against the wall.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Waiting for you," Jirobo answered straightening himself up.

"I'm not sleeping with you."

"Wasn't looking for that, I was just worried about you."

"Blondie took a lot out of me," Tayuya admitted as she started walking down the hall to her quarters, "but I'm fine, just tired."

"You must be tired," Jirobo remarked, "You aren't swearing as much as usual."

"I'm too tired to bitch you bastard," Tayuya deadpanned, "And since when do you care about how I feel?"

"Too much trouble breaking in a new Sound Four member, you remember how hard Kimimaro pushed us? Guy killed three candidates just because he thought they weren't being 'respectful' enough to Orochimaru," Jirobo stopped as they reached his door. "Night Tayuya, glad to see you acting more ladylike." Tayuya didn't reply and just kept walking on. Jirobo entered his quarters, changed clothes, climbed into bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

Inside his seal, think dark room, a small glowing ball of light drifted down from the outside world. It fell lazily until it just barely hit the ground when suddenly from the shadows a massive form burst out, engulfing the ball and swallowing it in an instant. The form's eyes glowed yellow and snake-like for an instant before closing again as the form chuckled/hissed.

Tayuya quietly entered her quarters, changed clothes, climbed into bed and fell asleep wondering the same thing she had wondered for weeks, "What happened to you Kin?"

Inside her seal, again think dark room, a small glowing ball of light drifted down from the outside world. It fell lazily until it landed on the ground softly. The room was pitch black except for the speck of light that illuminated a small patch of the floor and a piece of what looked like shredded snakeskin.

* * *

THWACK! The garden hoe came down with a satisfying whack, crushing the skull of the snake that had tried to enter the inn. 'Disgusting creature,' the old woman holding the hoe thought before she picked the snake up with her hoe and threw it into the garbage bin. She smiled to herself as she put the hoe back in its place and resumed her job as the landlady of the Hilltop Inn, eager to count today's earnings.

Every room was full which wasn't a surprise since the Chunin Exam was in Konoha this time and the Inn was on one of the major roads that lay between the Hidden Village and several major tourist cities. The only odd thing was the two gentlemen who had checked in hours earlier. One was quite handsome from what little she saw and the other...well just looked odd in her opinion.

'Although,' she thought, 'the straw hats and black cloaks with red clouds look nice. If only those Akatsuchi or whoever Jiraya asked her to look out for would wear some easily identifiable uniform, but then again that'd just be silly.' A breeze blew through the open window and chilled her a moment before she went back to work.

* * *

"Damn your hands are cold." Hiruzen grumbled, "How can a hand covered in medical chakra be cold?"

"It's an old medical technique for patients you find annoying," Hua Tuo head of the medical division and Hiruzen's personal doctor quipped as he pulled his hand off of Sarutobi's chest, "especially the ones who should have come to you far sooner than eight hours after a major battle."

"You had more important things to do," Sarutobi replied. Hua sighed, "Only you would say that and everybody in Konoha would say I should've seen to you first. And they'd be right, you shouldn't have used that jutsu, there's a reason we banned teaching it."

"It was either that or the Shiki Fujin, they were the only ways I could think of to stop him for good. So how am I?"

"Well physically you're fine except for the damage to your lungs from smoking..."

"Which I have taken your medicines for," the aged Hokage interrupted.

"Good, but I'm afraid the damage to your chakra and your body's ability to generate it is beyond my ability to cure. You're lucky it was in the hand though, I have some seals in my office that should slow the effects of the destruction of your chakra."

"How long do I have?"

"Before today, I'd say you had ten to fifteen years, now its three years, ten if you're lucky and stop using chakra altogether. Of course the more you use chakra, the faster it'll kill you." Hua sighed again before saying sadly, "I'm sorry Hiruzen, I wish there was more I could do."

"Thank you my friend," the old Hokage replied quietly. "I think you should return home now and make sure your family is alright." Hua nodded, packed his medical equipment, and left. The room was silent for a few moments as Hiruzen processed it all before speaking again, "I'm guessing you heard everything?" A corner of the room rippled before revealing Jiraiya standing there looking grim. "Second dumbest thing I've ever done."

"Sensei, I wish you'd stop blaming yourself for Orochimaru's actions. He..."

"As a whole, is the third stupidest thing I've done." Hiruzen finished, "And the stupidest thing I've ever done is letting the first person who mistreated Naruto live. I should've personally ripped them limb from limb." Jiraiya's eyes widened at the peace-loving God of Shinobi's declaration. The old man sighed, "I have to...no I need to retire. Jiraiya..."

"Oh, no," the Toad Sage interrupted, "I shouldn't be Hokage."

"You're right, I'm not asking you to be Hokage, besides the first thing you'd do is make the mandatory kunoichi uniform a see though bra, thong and a smile."

"Well maybe a garter belt and silk stockings for special occasions," Jiraiya admitted. "How did you know?"

"I read your yearly requests for the uniform change." Hiruzen replied causing both men to break into laughter for a few moments. "Jiraiya, I have a mission for you. I want you to find Tsunade and bring her back to Konoha. Officially it is to have her start her medic-nin program and aid in healing our injured."

"And unofficially?"

"Unofficially, you are bringing her back to eventually become Hokage."

"Do I have to tell her this?" Jiraiya asked. Hiruzen sighed and said, "You better, if we spring it on her here she may wreck the place." Both men chuckled at the thought of the blond woman's temper.

"And what do I do if she doesn't want to be Hokage?"

"Don't worry about convincing her to be Hokage, just convince her to come back to Konoha and I'll worry about the rest."

"All right, anything else?"

"Yes there's another unofficial goal for this mission, I'm sending Naruto with you. Your mission is to make him stop hating you."

"What?" Jiraiya asked shocked.

"Naruto hates you Jiraiya, he's glad his contract with the toads is gone and he thinks you tried to kill him on purpose...twice. I don't know what you were thinking but this is your chance to make up for your mistakes."

"Ah, the gaki's just confused, after a few minutes with the Gallant Jiraiya he'll probably start begging me to be his sensei again!" Jiraiya boasted.

"For your sake, I hope you're right," Sarutobi said looking at his student in a mix of sadness and disbelief before wondering what his surrogate grandson was doing.

* * *

The storm raged overhead, lightning split the sky and the rain did its best to wash away the tragedies of the invasion. Thunder rumbled again, loud enough to actually shake the ship. Naruto was just finishing the inventory when his ears picked up a tiny whimper of fear and a whispered voice call out, "Big Brother?"

Naruto looked away from the monitor covering inventory and caught a glimpse of Kin's brainwave monitor. She had regained consciousness without the system realizing it...apparently her brainwaves were different again. Naruto walked over to her carefully, signaling the nearby Octobot to be ready.

"Hello?" she called again, her voice childlike and timid, "Is anybody there?" She peeked her head up cautiously and caught sight of Naruto.

"Hello," Naruto replied, "I'm Naruto, what's your name?"

"Tobirama...Tobirama Senju," She whispered back. "Are you a Senju too? Tou-san says I'm not supposed to talk to non-Senjus."

"I'm an Octavius-Smythe...but I used to be an Uzumaki," Naruto offered. "Is that good enough?" Kin smiled and nodded her head. "Tou-san says that Uzumaki are all right. Where am I and where's my brother?"

"This is my house, and I don't know where your brother is." Thunder boomed again and Kin/Tobirama's eyes widened in fear before she started shaking.

"It's okay," Naruto said trying to channel the Old Man the times he comforted Naruto. "I'm right here; I won't let the storm hurt you."

"Promise?"

"I swear on my nindo," Naruto answered, thankful that Tobirama was willing to trust him. "How about I tell you a story until you fall asleep?" Kin/Tobirama nodded enthusiastically and the blond moved his chair beside her bed/coffin. "I'll tell you about the time I saved Wave Country."

"Are there any monsters in it?" she asked.

"Just one, but he was a good demon," Naruto answered before he started his story.

* * *

In the darkness it waited. A piece had escaped before and now it was waiting for another opening, another chance to be free.

* * *

_Well this seems like a nice place to stop doesn't it?_

_The Chapter Title is in reference to a Reel Big Fish song & a reviewer that said they didn't like the last chapter being filler. Here's the thing, filler is something that happens to pad time until something important happens, this is laying the groundwork for things that will happen in future chapters._

_An Cao is a friend of mine. Hua Tuo (c. 140–208) was an ancient Chinese physician who lived in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the first name that popped up in Google without going through a list._

_Hopefully, this will satisfy you all until I can finish the next chapter, don't worry I've got a lot written; I just need time to type and edit it. Until then, thanks for reading and please review, seriously I've been waiting forever for review 100. Its at 99 as of posting time._

_Oh and speaking of reviews, one reviewer said that Naruto was underpowered...here is my response._

Omake: The Epic Adventures of Overpowered Naruto

Naruto vs. Neji

"And what can you do?" Neji taunted.

"I have metal tentacles, energy gauntlets, chakra sucking talons, I can fly, spit acid with a mechanical tail, create elaborate holograms, turn myself into a perfect duplicate of anybody without chakra, burst through walls without taking damage by wearing a rhino suit, summon armies of mechanical spiders and robots that could destroy cities in minutes, oh and I can do this." Naruto put his fists together and then opened three of his right fingers, showing his right fist was clenched around his left thumb. Naruto then pulled his fists apart apparently removing his right thumb, then put the fists together reattaching it. "Ta, da."

"Thumb Severing no Jutsu," Neji stated in awe and fear. The crowd heard and saw this and started murmuring the same name, shocked that the blond knew this ancient and impossible quadruple S-ranked technique. "Proctor," Neji stated, "I forfeit."

"Winner, Naruto Octavius-Smythe!" Genma announced still in stunned by seeing the legendary technique that even the Sage of Six Paths had reportedly never mastered. "The next match..."

"I give up!"

"Me too!"

"I'm out!"

"To face Octavius-Smythe would be illogical."

"Mother didn't raise a fool, I forfeit."

"Well since the other competitors forfeit and Sasuke isn't here...I guess Naruto Octavius-Smythe wins the tournament." Sarutobi suddenly appeared in front of Naruto, took off his hat and handed it to Naruto.

"For mastery of the most difficult jutsu in the entire world," Sarutobi announced, "I name you, Naruto Octavius-Smythe, Godaime Hokage!" The Kazekage suddenly appeared and ripped off his hat and face to reveal Orochimaru, "I surrender! Invasion's off! We give up!"

"Invasion what..." but Naruto's question was cut off by the sudden appearance of a bizarre group of individuals all dressed in black cloaks with red clouds on them. The red cloud wearers immediately dropped any weapons they had on the ground, dropped to their knees and threw their hands in the air. "We give up!" one in an orange mask shouted, "We're sorry, we won't try to take over the world again, we'll do anything to make it up to you! Just please don't use that jutsu on us!"

And so a steady stream of bandits, missing nins, regular ninja, kages and daimyos streamed into the stadium to surrender to Naruto, overnight the Elemental Nations were renamed: "Naruto's Nations." And so with the world under his complete control and everybody too scared to do anything that might incur his wrath, Naruto went onto to live...a very boring life. And that dear Reader is why overpowered Naruto stories usually suck.


	9. Chapter 9: Family Matters

Greetings random assortment of readers of this story. Well new year, new chapter. Last time, we basically went everywhere in the elemental nations without a cover charge and had the surprisingly most popular and controversial omake yet. In this chapter we hit several of fandom's favorite recurring elements like the council and why the Kage's don't use Shadow Clones for paperwork. Well my friends in this chapter I'm going to do my take on them as well as write a few scenes I've never seen in any other story before. Oh and I don't own anything related to the source material...unless you think I do in which case I've got some lovely beach front property you might be interested in owning located in scenic Nebraska.

Chapter 9: Family Matters

The council of Konoha was divided into three sections: the first consisted of the various clans that founded or migrated to the village over the years such as the Hyuga and the Aburame; the second was an elected body of civilians who despite the Hokage's wishes never seemed to change or if there was a replacement the new member was even dumber and more annoying; and the final section was made up of the Hokage himself, his hand picked advisors, in this case his former teammates, the heads of various departments such as ANBU or the hospital, and a few non-clan affiliated shinobi elected by their peers.

Sarutobi looked around at the assembled council members, it was obvious who was a shinobi and who wasn't: the shinobi were all visibly tired and many were bandaged, while the civilians looked fine physically but many looked emotionally shocked as few if any of them had ever seen the effects of war let alone been in the middle of one before.

"I call this emergency council session to order," Sarutobi stated loudly, silencing all conversation. "Ibiki Morino, you were in command of the wall, report."

The scarred proctor from the first exam stood up to address the council, "At approximately 2:15, a large three headed snake was summoned outside wall section thirteen. The snake destroyed the guard tower before entering the village where it moved toward the center of town until it was stopped by several of what were later identified as genin Uzumaki's clones and a toad summoned by Lord Jiraiya. Our forces were able to hold off several attempts to breach the walls at other points; however, the bulk of the enemy's forces were positioned to take advantage of the opening. Our engineers believe it will take several weeks for both the wall and tower to be reassembled and restored to full strength.

"Very well," Sarutobi replied, "Naruto is there anything you'd like to add?"

"My clones had succeeded in defeating the center head and were about to finish off the other two when the Sannin interfered by summoning his toad and killing off several of my clones. Also, I go by Naruto Octavious-Smythe now." Naruto stated formally.

"While we are on the subject of Uzumaki," one of the older civilians began, "We would like to know where he received his new abilities and when we can expect them to become available to our shinobi forces." Various individuals eyed Naruto's tentacles just as eagerly as Orochimaru had.

"Where I received my technology is none of your concern," Naruto stated, "As for sharing it, I have no intention of allowing it to fall into anyone's hands."

"Now see here!" a particularly shrill voiced woman shouted, "Our forces need that technology!"

"Why? Do you doubt their skill?" Naruto asked causing every active and retired ninja in the room to look at her.

"No! No!" the woman said panicked with all eyes on her.

"Then you doubt their abilities?" Naruto asked conversationally.

"No! No!" the woman repeated even more panicked, feeling the eyes boring into her.

"Then you have no faith in them to protect you?"

"No, its not..." the woman's voice began to crack under the pressure.

"What our esteemed council member," an older man with bandages covering half of his face began, "is trying to say, is that with young Naruto's devices Konoha could be even stronger and more prosperous."

"Even if I felt the need to share, I lack the resources to produce additional units and the procedure is dangerous. "

"I'm sure we could provide you with any materials and volunteers you may need," the bandaged man offered.

"And will you provide me with corpse removal as well?" Naruto asked, "Because I can assure you that the odds for survival are low. I barely survived it and I had inside help as you all know. So unless you have a few dozen extra ninja you wouldn't mind losing, I suggest you forget about it."

"Then you shall have to practice."

"On what, cadavers?"

"Konoha has many prisoners, especially now, perhaps we could take some of our captured enemies and death row inmates..."

"Enough!" Sarutobi roared, "The last ninja who experimented on human beings in our village just ran away after Naruto here helped defeat his armies, would you like to join him Danzo?" The now identified Danzo stayed silent. "I didn't think so, as far as Naruto's technology is concerned, that is Naruto's to do with as he sees fit, although I will ask you to share what you could to help our own technology improve."

"Okay," Naruto replied and Sarutobi could hear the unspoken 'Old Man.'

"And as for Naruto himself, I am putting forward my personal recommendation for Naruto Uzu...excuse me, Octavius-Smythe to be promoted to chunin immediately." The council fell silent for a few seconds before several members of the council exploded in shock, mostly negative. "Well then let me rephrase that, per my decree backed by his performance both in exam and on the 'battlefield,'" Sarutobi stressed, "I am giving Naruto Octavius-Smythe a 'battlefield' promotion to the rank of chunin with all of the rights and privileges thereof. Congratulations."

"Thank you sir," Naruto answered solemnly, ignoring the eyes of the disgruntled civilians. "Do I have to wear the vest?"

"Only in times of war," Sarutobi answered before turning back to the council. "Given the council's current emotional state, I'm going to order a half-hour recess so everyone can calm down while I discuss some matters with Naruto...in private." he added cutting off anybody who would want to join them. "Meeting is in recess!" Sarutobi quickly led Naruto out of the chambers and into his office. "Somehow, I think having you and the council in the same room is going to lead to nothing but headaches. I have a mission for you that will probably take a while."

"Sure thing old man, but don't I have to give my report to the council and rub it in their faces how awesome I am?"

"No, just make some clones to write down what happened and I'll just have somebody I don't like read it into record."

"Oh that is evil," Naruto laughed, "I think I like you more than ever. So are shadow clones how you get through all of your paperwork?"

"It was the first time around, but then the Yondaime screwed it up."

"What happened?" Naruto asked, intrigued that somebody was actually insulting the Fourth Hokage, the Hokage people had practically elevated to the level of a saint.

"He made a dozen clones and took off for a date, when he came back; eleven of his clones were passed out drunk after cleaning out all of the tower's booze."

"And the twelfth?"

"That one went mad, both angry and crazy, he wrote and released several laws that the council eagerly approved: like lowering the standards at the academy, gave a tax break to the rich which in turn meant out ninjas had to go on more dangerous missions and most annoying of all...he gave the council more power."

"And the ninja population didn't lynch him because?"

"Because he also approved of the creation of several ninja only businesses and its only when you know how a village is supposed to be run do you know what will screw it up. Anyway, when he came back he swore he would never let it happen again so he banned using clones for legislative paperwork."

"That doesn't explain why the laws weren't revoked."

"Oh it's because a couple of days later he did the one thing that would ensure nobody could ever be able to change things back." Sarutobi grumbled.

"What?"

"He died. And since he did it by sacrificing himself somehow the people decided those last documents were what he really felt were needed by Konoha and to undo that was the worst thing ever."

"I don't think I want to be Hokage anymore." Sarutobi laughed at Naruto's statement, "It's not as much fun as it was first time around but there are perks."

"Like?"

"We'll talk about it another time, right now I have a mission for you." Sarutobi reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a photograph of a blond woman that he handed to Naruto, "I want you to go out and find me this woman." Naruto stared at her for a few seconds before responding, "Isn't there an easier way of getting a date?"

"It's not for a date she's Tsunade Senju, Slug Sannin, granddaughter of the Shodai (First) Hokage and one of my students." Sarutobi explained.

"So I'm bringing her back to boost morale?" Naruto asked.

"In part, she's also one of, if not the best medic in the world, with all of our injured we need her medical expertise."

"So am I on my own or will I have a team?"

"You have a partner..." Sarutobi began hesitantly.

"Who is it?" Naruto asked warily.

"Jiraiya," Sarutobi expected Naruto to explode, but to his new credit the blond took a deep breath, let it out and asked, "Why?"

"She's very good at avoiding being found, his connections and personal knowledge of her makes him the only one who can track her."

"And I'm needed because?"

"There are so many ways I could justify it, I could tell you that its policy on retrieval missions or he'll need the extra security or manpower or just because you're that damn awesome but those would be lies."

"Except the last one," Naruto interrupted.

"Except the last one," Sarutobi agreed, "But the truth is I need you two to be able to work together."

"If our positions were reversed, how would you react if I asked you to work with Orochimaru?"

"I'd probably explode, insult you and your intelligence, and refuse to do it."

"So why shouldn't I do the same thing?"

"You have every reason to never want to see him again and I wouldn't blame you, but I want the two of you to at least get along. He's my student and you...well I've always seen you as like a grandson to me." Naruto was silent for a moment, he knew that the feeling between the two of them was there but neither one had ever said anything.

"All right, but I have two conditions, one, unless it has to do directly with the mission I want him to leave me alone."

"All I can do is promise that I'll tell him to do that, I don't know if he'll obey."

"That leads to two, this mission is a three man mission and I get to pick the third member."

"I'll agree to that as long as they agree, you bring them here so I can make it official, and the person you choose is within reason."

"Can I pick you?"

"Kami knows I'd love to go on a mission again." Sarutobi admitted smiling, "Unfortunately the village would fall apart without me and I've got to leave a village for you to run someday." Naruto laughed, "All right, then I better come up with somebody else." The two discussed the short list of people Naruto would want to go with him and Sarutobi gave his grandson in all but blood a pass to see his candidates even in secure areas before he returned to the council meeting, leaving behind an office of Naruto clones to fill out reports on what he did during the invasion...all several hundred copies of him.

* * *

If you asked the people of Konoha where ANBU headquarters was ninety-nine percent would give you a wrong answer including: under the Hokage Tower, in the Forest of Death, under one of the many abandoned buildings around the village or under the Falling Cherry Blossom strip club. The last one is probably because the club has a stripper who starts out in full ANBU gear and slowly takes it off until she's just left wearing a mask...and nobody complains because nobody is looking at her face anyway. Although the club caters to both genders so in the ladies side there is a guy who does the exact same thing and in his case the ladies aren't complaining because they're busy staring at a set of abs you could grate chocolate on. That's not an exaggeration, bachelorette parties pay the club good money to do that. I'm rambling but you probably don't care because you're enjoying the mental images you've created from the descriptions, so I'll wait.

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All done? Okay moving on. The truth was that ANBU headquarters, at least the part where all ANBU would meet was known only to the ANBU themselves, former ANBU, & the Hokage. The things that people thought were there: prison cells, high security vaults, etc. were all scattered through the village to ensure as much anonymity as possible and to prevent anybody who did escape from a cell to be able to quickly get their hands on anything important on their way out.

Sarutobi had given Naruto the location of one of the prison blocks, one for prisoners high ranking enough to warrant separation from the rest but not dangerous enough to warrant the highest levels of security, located underneath a pet store of all places.

His target was busy with one of the tougher cases, an Oto-nin who didn't crack under the normal tortures, didn't react to any of the genjutus placed on him, didn't even blink when they got to the brutal stuff. I mean, really brutal, we're talking the weird stuff, the butt stuff. Since all of that had failed, they had called in an expert to try and do whatever was needed to get information. Naruto watched through a one-way mirror as his Invasion partner was quickly becoming frustrated at her victim basically ignoring her actions. Suddenly, Naruto remembered seeing her target before near the ramen stand, he had gotten drawn into the brawl his clones had with the Ichiraku's would be attackers, and he had an idea.

"Hey you can't go in there!" the guard who was supposed to be recording the interrogation shouted as he saw Naruto approach the door to the interrogation chamber.

"I don't think Anko will mind," Naruto replied as he extended his tentacles and used them to open the door. Both occupants turned their heads to see the door being opened by a metal claw on the end of a tentacle and both sets of eyes widened: one in surprise and the other in fear.

"Hello Anko," the blond at the other end of the tentacle said cheerfully as he entered the room, "How are you?"

"Fine," Anko answered, still surprised to see him there. The captive sat paralyzed as he watched the tentacles swaying, snake-like as they moved, apparently scanning the room. "What are you doing here?" the special jonin asked.

"I'm not allowed to see my favorite kunoichi?" Naruto asked back.

'Favorite?' the captive repeated mentally, just barely aware of anything, except the claws that had turned to stare at him, boring into his very soul.

"I was thinking about taking you out to lunch, interested?" Naruto walked closer to Anko bringing the claws closer to the captive, letting him see the instruments that attacked him yesterday.

'Sweet Kami, are they getting sharper?' the captive thought as the ends seemed to transition from faux-fingers to sharpened knives.

"I can't, I'm busy interrogating this guy," Anko answered, now noticing the captive's reaction, sweat beginning to drip off of his head.

"And if he told you everything he knew you could leave?" Anko nodded in reply. Naruto turned to face the captive. The Oto-nin stared at the blond's face, a face he had seen a dozen times at once as his claws had attacked his squad. "Hello, I'm Naruto. I think we met yesterday. Now I want to take my good friend Anko out to eat but she can't because you aren't answering her questions." The claws shook, almost disapprovingly at him, scolding him. "Why not? Don't you know its impolite to ignore a beautiful woman who's talking to you?" The claws came closer so that he could hear the whirling and clicking of the machinery again. "But then again, maybe you're just shy, that's fine, but you don't have to worry..." The tentacles spread out, slowly surrounding the captive, who didn't dare take his eyes off of the blond, but he could hear the demonic machines slinking around him. "...because we're all friends here." Anko emphasized Naruto's statement by standing beside the blond and wrapping an arm around him while wrapping one of his regular arms around her. "And you're going to tell your new friends everything we want to know, right?" The claw right by the prisoner's ear snapped shut and he could feel the puff of air from the force of the claw closing...and his resolve snapped.

* * *

"What did you do to him yesterday?" Anko asked as she and Naruto walked down the street ignoring the citizens, both those who would glare at either one or the other or those who had started to look at Naruto in awe. "He looked like he was going to pee his pants."

"I thought he did," Naruto answered, "Or at least he smelled like he did." The two laughed until they came to the best restaurant in Konoha if not the world in Naruto's opinion, Ichiraku Ramen. They entered to see the Ichiraku's fiddling with the stove, who looked up and smiled when they heard Naruto entered. Well Teuchi just smiled, Ayame dashed over and hugged Naruto, happy to see him.

"Hello Ayame," Naruto said, hugging her back, "Hi Old Man, what's the special today?"

"Nothing at the moment," Teuchi answered going back to the stove, "the burners aren't working and I haven't figured out how to fix them."

"Have you called for a repairman?"

"Yes, but he can't come over until all of the 'damage' to the other restaurants are fixed." Teuchi answered adding a disbelieving tone to 'damage.' "I've seen the ones they talked about and there's nothing wrong with them, they just say they've been damaged to tie-up repairmen from going to the competition and cash in on the insurance. It's the same crap they pulled after the Kyuubi att..ACK!" Teuchi pulled his hand back from the stove after getting shocked.

"Dad!" Ayame shouted as she ran back to her father. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it just stings."

"Let me take a look at this," Naruto said as he walked to the stove.

"Be careful," both Anko and Ayame cautioned, causing both girls to lock eyes after they said it wondering why the other girl said it too.

"Don't worry," Naruto reassured them, "I've had a lot of training in electronics recently," he and his newly emerged tentacles began poking around, "as well as the most advanced diagnostic equipment," his lower right tentacle reached out to touch some of the exposed wiring getting visibly shocked causing it to jerk back in shock, sway about is if it was dizzy and collapsed to the floor. "And I've got Number 6 for the dangerous stuff," Naruto finished. "Looks like there's something wrong with all of the burners, I think you'll need a new one."

Teuchi sighed after hearing that, "I was afraid of that. Stoves aren't cheap."

"So do you need some money?" Naruto asked.

"No, we don't want charity."

"What charity? You're two of my precious people; this is just paying you back for everything you've done for me." Naruto answered as he pulled out a large wad of bills. "Will this cover the new stove?"

"And then some," Teuchi replied staring at the stack. "Where'd you get that?"

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."

"Naruto," Ayame stated in a non-nonsense tone.

"It's not stolen if that's what you're worried about," Naruto answered, which was true, technically. "I made it betting on my beating Neji in the first round. Teuchi's eyes lit up, "Of course, I put some money on you to win. All I have to do is find the bookie and collect!"

"You bet on me?" Naruto asked.

"Of course, why wouldn't we put money on our favorite customer?" Before Naruto could answer one of his tentacles tapped him on the shoulder and pointed back to the stove.

"Oh hey, looks like my friends have fixed it up." Everybody turned their eyes to the stove where the four, well three tentacles had put it back together. "They cannibalized one of the burners and wiring so you'll only have three left but it should last for a while before you have to completely replace it."

"Great!" Between that and the money from the bet, we'll be fine; we don't need your money Naruto."

"Tough it's yours, I don't want it."

"But Naruto," Ayame began.

"But nothing." Naruto finished, "Having me as a regular customer couldn't have been good for business. So this is yours to do with as you please, buy something nice for your home, get some more padding for the stools, fund Ayame's trip to try food around the Elemental Nations, whatever you want."

"You remembered," Ayame said surprised and touched.

"It's important to you, of course I'd remember, now one special and whatever Anko wants."

"Pork ramen," Anko added.

"One pork ramen for Miss Mitarashi and one Naruto Special coming right up!" Teuchi repeated happily.

"What's a Naruto Special?" Naruto asked.

"We'll find out!"

A Naruto Special as it turned out was a massive bowl full of noodles, 3 kinds of meat and a half dozen different add ins. It took a while, but eventually Anko and Naruto finished their lunches and began walking back to the interrogation chamber.

"Well if that's how you treat your precious people, how do I join the group?" Anko asked.

"Actually that's part of the reason I asked you to lunch."

"You mean it's not because I'm super sexy and your favorite kunoichi?" Anko pouted.

"Those were just bonuses, I need your help with something."

"Something fun?"

"Maybe, if we're lucky."

"Something with blood?"

"Maybe if you're lucky."

"Well now I'm interested, what's the job?"

"I'm going on a mission with the toad..."

"The white haired perverted one?" Anko interrupted.

"That's the one, we're going to find his female teammate and I need a third member for the team."

"Don't you have teammates you could ask?"

"Only in name."

"Shouldn't you ask somebody you know and trust?"

"I trust you," Naruto answered sincerely.

"Why?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"We worked together once."

"And we worked together great."

"We barely know each other." Naruto stopped walking and took one of Anko's hands and shook it, stopping her too.

"Hello, my name is Naruto Octavius-Smythe. I like my precious people like the Old Man, the Ichiraku's, Iruka and you. I also like ramen and flying. I dislike waiting for ramen to cook, being teammates with idiots, toads, perverts and spiders a little bit. My dream is to find more precious people. Any questions?"

"I still don't know why you want me."

"I need somebody to watch my back."

"What about Kakashi?"

"He might be able to fight, but I doubt he would to protect me."

"Protect you from what?"

"From the toad."

"What?"

"He's tried to kill me in the past, I'm certain he'll try again in the future."

"Why?"

"Who knows? Revenge for the Fourth, belief that I was a threat to the village, or maybe he's just jealous of my good looks." Anko laughed at the last one before adding, "Sounds about right."

"So are you in?" Naruto asked.

"I wish, but I've got more prisoners to interrogate."

"So after you've made all of the cannon fodder spill their guts and empty their bowels, then can you go?"

"Well…" Naruto's eyes got bigger as he performed the famed _Koinu no me Jutsu (Puppy Eyes Technique)_, "Stop that," Anko giggled, "it only works if you're young and cute."

"Are you saying I'm not cute?" Naruto asked.

"No, you're handsome, there's a big difference."

"So will you protect a handsome man from a jealous old toad?"

"All right, after the interrogations, if the Hokage approves, I will go with you."

"Great, you want help?"

"You want to help me?" Anko asked.

"Sure, it'll give me an excuse to be around you more, besides you haven't told me about yourself yet."

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything." Naruto held his arm out, Anko looped hers through it and with that the two new partners walked back to the prison.

* * *

'Well this has been a full day,' Naruto thought to himself as he packed his bag for tomorrow's mission. It had taken two hours for he and Anko to get through the dozen guys she had left to interrogate. Anko had broken most of them in five minutes just by talking to them while playing with a kunai, Naruto needed to walk into the room a couple of times with his tentacles swaying to scare a few others, and it took Anko half an hour, a cactus, a feather duster, and a sock puppet to get the last one to talk.

While Naruto was out, the Hokage had kept the council meeting going discussing the damages, what should be rebuilt first, ways to improve defense so this wouldn't happen again, what needs to be done to counter attack, was it plausible to invade Suna in retaliation, who the hell sang "Who Let the Ninken Out?" and funniest of all to Sarutobi, his secretary read the reports the Naruto clones were writing into record.

'That'll teach her to screw up my breakfast order,' Sarutobi thought vindictively as she read the tenth report the mechanized blond's clones had written, this time detailing how he had stopped a team from blowing up the hospital but in the process the enemy ninjas had destroyed one of the hardware stores owned by one of the council members.

With meeting done, Sarutobi had eagerly returned to his office to get away from his old teammates and the rest of the 'esteemed' council. It only took a few minutes for Naruto and Anko to clear her addition to the team. The two went on their separate ways shortly after that, with Anko telling Ibiki she'd be gone and packing and Naruto returning to his apartment to get the personal items he couldn't live without, mostly the dog nightcap, and sneaking back to his new real home, a spaceship that had landed at the bottom of a canyon.

From there he had begun getting his affairs in order, packing for the trip, talking with his family about what new abilities they should add in the short time available, how construction was going on the various projects, and most important how his guests were doing.

"Status," Naruto stated.

"Well aside from the missing parts, I should have the Recombinator assembled before you return..." Landon began.

"I meant with them," Naruto interrupted.

"Oh, the male is unconscious with no indication of recovering anytime soon, although we have the occasional glitch in the sensor readings that we haven't been able to lock down that obscures reading for a few seconds. The female hasn't changed or rather she has. She regained consciousness briefly screaming obscenities at somebody named Homura to quote 'catch that demon cat Tora' end quote. But we were able to put her to sleep again quickly." Landon explained.

"Why does she keep changing?"

"I believe that the jutsu intended to turn her into this Tobirama Senju. When it was interrupted she had the memories of Tobirama Senju dumped in her head without over writing her own memories. This has overwhelmed her mind which is trying to make sense of it all by loading both sets of memories. One set ends up dominate, sometimes its her natural memories and it succeeds, but other times it ends up load Tobirama's memories and something causes it to stop somewhere along the line and she'll start living his life from the point her mind has loaded. Unfortunately, this is causing her body to tear itself apart faster."

"Vater," Naruto began, "Could we use your Neuro-Augmentation Ray to draw Tobirama's memories from her brain?"

"It could be done," Otto began, "but it wouldn't be a clean removal. It would be like trying to scoop goldfish blindfolded and only trying to catch ones of a certain color. It would be easier to try and remove all of her memories, then separate the two sets and return her memories to her."

"Isn't that a bit invasive?"

"Ja, but considering the mess her mind's in it would be an improvement." Several monitors lit up.

"She's coming around again," Landon announced.

"But which one is she?" Octavius asked.

"Why does she keep walking up?" Naruto asked.

"We've been using short term sedatives since we didn't know what we were going to do with her." Landon answered.

"Naruto?" Kin's voice called out. The blond hurried over to her side.

"Kin? You remember me?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah, what's happening? Why can't I focus?" she asked groggily.

"Your mind keeps trying to load Tobirama's memories instead of yours and it keeps failing. When I stopped Orochimaru's jutsu, I had no idea the backlash it would cause. Your body and mind are divided and its my fault."

"Not your fault," Kin corrected. "Snake bastard's."

"I'm trying to fix it, but I need time. If I'm right you might end up stronger than before. I just need time to finish building the machine and time to remove the other set of memories."

"Will it hurt?" Kin asked.

"It shouldn't, but it will take a long time."

"How long?"

"Weeks, I need to get special parts and there's a lot of memories to sort out."

"Will I be awake?"

"It's too dangerous, when you're awake your body is pulling itself apart. I'm going to give you a long term sedative and wake you when its all over."

"Will you stay with me?"

"I can't, I have to go far to retrieve what I'm looking for, but you'll have the best care I can get you."

"Then stay until I fall asleep." Kin requested, her eyes closing and opening slowly. "Can you tell me a story?"

"A story?"

"Like the one you told me about Wave."

"Okay," Naruto answered quietly and surprised. "This is the story of how I fought Tora..."

"Damn demon cat," Kin muttered sleepily.

"Yeah," Naruto answered before telling the story of how the cat nearly cut his teammates in half before he saved them, oblivious to the conversation some of his family members were having.

"How would she remember Naruto telling the child Tobirama a story?" Landon asked.

"Maybe Tobirama's new memories aren't merging with his old ones and are being given to Kim. That's why she isn't so hostile, she remembers him comforting her." Otto offered.

"Than this is perfect," the Kingpin stated quietly as he walked up to the two scientists watching the blond from afar. "Naruto will need allies that he can trust outside of the ship and this girl trusts him, but we need to increase the level of trust. Otto can you find a way to change her memories so Naruto shows up in favorable moments?"

"You want me to rewrite her memories?" Otto hissed angrily.

"You did it to Spiderman," the Kingpin countered.

"I gave him amnesia and tricked my enemy into believing he was my ally. I did not take a girl who isn't even old enough to be an adult in our world and change her past to suit my whims. I will not do it."

"And what will you say if she leaves and tells others where we are and leads them back here?"

"That won't happen."

"How do you know?"

"I have faith in Naruto convincing her to say nothing." With that Naruto walked off.

"Octavius is a fool," the Kingpin stated.

"You don't trust Naruto?" Landon asked.

"I do," the Kingpin replied, "but I'd rather have a backup just in case. You never know when it could become handy."

"I understand," Landon stated as he went back to monitoring Kin.

Eventually Kin fell asleep and Naruto finished his preparations. The next day Naruto, Anko, and Jiraiya left to go find Tsunade. We'll pick up on their in our next chapter. But right now, let's continue seeing how things are going in Konoha.

* * *

A funeral was held days later for those who had died during the Invasion to honor their sacrifice, presided over by the Hokage himself. The morning honored the past, that afternoon would change the future.

"You beat me here?" Sasuke asked surprised at the sight of his sensei waiting for him, he then looked at the stand he and Kakashi were meeting at, "I don't like natto or sweet things," Sasuke complained.

"Typically when somebody takes you out for a free meal, you don't complain about the location," Kakashi countered. "Come on, sit down and have a couple sticks of dango and tea." Sasuke did what his sensei said. "Good now I wanted to talk about some concerns I've been having about you."

"Like what?"

"I'm worried that you've become too focused on revenge..."

"I need to keep training and get stronger," Sasuke interrupted.

"Yes, but if you push yourself too hard, then you run the risk that you are going to burn yourself out. Or worse, cause serious damage to yourself and end your career. Then who will avenge the Uchiha?" Sasuke just stared at Kakashi. "I'm not asking you to stop entirely, just take a few days off. You got hit very hard and had a concussion, you need to rest, sleep in late, spend some time enjoying life."

"You don't understand, how can I rest knowing the one who killed everybody I cared about is alive and out there running free?" Sasuke got up and quickly left before Kakashi could respond.

"That could've gone better," Kakashi turned his head and saw Asuma and Kurenai at their table.

"I'll give him some time to cool off, I better go see my other student."

"Tell Sakura 'Hello' for us," Kurenai said.

"I've seen her already. She took my advice and is resting until her ribs completely heal. I haven't had a chance to actually talk to Naruto yet," Kakashi explained before thinking to himself, 'Not for a while actually, not since I took Sasuke to train for the Chunin Exams.'

"It might be a while before he comes back," Asuma stated. "Who knows when he and Jiraiya will get back?"

"What? When did they go?"

"A couple days ago."

"Naruto's is my student and just a genin, why wasn't I informed?"

"Because he isn't a genin anymore." Kurenai answered. Both men looked at her surprised, "Anko told me, she's on the mission too."

'Naruto got promoted?' Kakashi thought to himself. 'And he didn't tell me? But this is Naruto, if he was promoted, I would've heard him yelling about it all over Konoha. Why didn't Naruto find me? Why didn't he come tell me? Or did he try and I ignored him? No, I wouldn't ignore him...would I?' Kakashi was pulled out of his thoughts by the arrival of an ANBU.

"Kakashi, Lord Hokage has sent me to bring you to him immediately," the ANBU reported.

"All right," Kakashi replied as he put money on the table to pay his bill, "Let's go." The masked duo disappeared in a swirl of leaves and reappeared in their leader's office moments later.

"Kakashi as ordered sir," the ANBU reported.

"Very good, dismissed," Sarutobi replied, the animal masked ninja bowed and walked out the door.

"You summoned me Lord Hokage," Kakashi said.

"Yes, we have received reports of bandits attacking the convoy carrying the taxes from the northern cities. The Daimyo has requested we send somebody to eliminate them. You depart tomorrow."

"Is that all sir?"

"Yes, dismissed."

"What about Naruto?"

"What about him?"

"Why wasn't I informed about his promotion? For that matter why was he promoted? He has shown potential, but not enough of the traits that make for a good chunin."

"I disagree, during the battle he displayed more than enough forethought, adaptability, and leadership to qualify as a chunin. And on top of that at least two-thirds of all of our captures can be directly credited to him and that's not including his actions when he stopped Gaara's rampage, saved his teammates, fought Orochimaru and his guards, and saved my butt. If that doesn't qualify him, I don't know what does." Sarutobi answered in a neutral almost conversational tone.

"Naruto did all that?" Kakashi asked, "He did all of that and he didn't find me and tell me. Why?"

"That's between the two of you," Sarutobi answered, surprising Kakashi who hadn't realized he was talking aloud. "But from what I've heard your teaching style leaves much to be desired."

"Sir?"

"That is between you and your students," Sarutobi replied, "but for now focus on your mission, we need you out there impressing clients."

"Yes, Lord Hokage," Kakashi answered still distracted before leaving. That night, Kakashi poured over every memory he had of training his team and came to the same conclusion he had before: he didn't push Sakura hard enough, Sasuke pushed himself too hard trying to match the image he had created of Itachi, and Naruto had talent but his grasp on the basics was horrible, that was why he tried to have Ebisu train Naruto. What was the problem everybody talked about?

But Kakashi wasn't the only Sharingan user who was currently lost in the past.

'This is too easy,' Itachi Uchiha thought to himself; the duo from the Akatsuki had entered the village without raising any suspicion. Itachi had offered to buy them tea at the White Lotus, famous for Uncle Iroh's so called 'Evil Tea,' to celebrate but his partner had declined and they had split up to search faster.

That had been hours ago, he had turned up nothing and had now found himself in his family home searching for a few personal items he had left behind the night he had been forced to kill his clan.

The sight of his old home, looking just as he had left it years ago actually got to him and caused him to let his guard down for the first time in years. Itachi cursed himself for doing it and Konoha and the Uchiha clan for causing the entire mess. Itachi was so overcome with emotions that he failed to notice the door opening...

"Itachi!"

...until it was too late. Sasuke had seen him and was already throwing shuriken at him. Itachi deflected them so that they would fall to the floor harmlessly. He then charged at his younger brother, knocking him out of the open door, preventing him from damaging the family home further. Itachi rolled with the tackle getting back to his feet away from his brother. Sasuke quickly got back to his feet and started at his traitorous sibling while trying to regain his self-control, "What are you doing here Itachi?"

"I came to check on you little brother," Itachi partially lied, "To see how much your hatred has grown." Sasuke's self-control evaporated again and he lashed out at Itachi again. The elder Uchiha easily blocked or dodged all of his sibling's strikes but didn't strike back, angering Sasuke further until he jumped backward and started the handsign sequence Kakashi taught him ending with his hand coated with lightning chakra. Sasuke charged forward crying out the jutsu name, "Chidori!"

Itachi stood there impassively, waiting until the last second to move out of the way and grabbed Sasuke's arm forcing him to stop dead in his tracks and lock Sharingans with Itachi.

"Foolish little brother," Itachi taunted before hitting Sasuke with the Uchiha clan's ultimate Genjutsu, the Tsukuyomi. For the next three days inside/three seconds outside, Sasuke was forced to relive the deaths of everybody he loved at the hands of the one he probably loved most.

When it was over, Sasuke collapsed/passed out from the strain. Itachi looked down at his brother, both sad at what he had done and a bit angry that Sasuke wasn't strong enough to defeat him yet. He turned his head when he caught sight of another black cloak with red clouds.

"It seems our target has left on a mission, should we go after him now?" Itachi's partner asked.

"No, the guards are more alert at night; we'll stay here tonight and leave in the morning." Itachi decided, "It will be easier to get past them undetected." Itachi picked up his unconscious brother and actually tucked his brother in bed. He then returned to his old and surprisingly clean room, packed, and slept in his old bed for the first time in years, leaving his partner to the guest room. The duo from the Akatsuki left Konoha an hour after sunrise with the village oblivious to them ever being there.

A couple hours later, Kakashi let himself into Sasuke's house and smiled when he saw his student apparently sleeping in late. 'Looks like Sasuke actually took my advice,' Kakashi thought to himself. He left the room quietly and wrote Sasuke a note telling him that Kakashi would be on a long mission. The jonin left the house happy his fellow Sharingan wielder had taken his advice.

* * *

Well friends looks like Sasuke's screwed. Show of hands who's concerned about him? Why am I asking, I can't see you, or can I? Oh fun fact, Kakashi and Sasuke would have never been injured if Kisame didn't get thirsty. Seriously look it up, because the shark man wanted a drink the jonin in the tea place noticed the duo. Bonus points to whoever spots my Avatar the Last Airbender and my Naruto the Abridged Series references, not Little Kuriboh's version.

Next time we begin the arc I have entitled TSUNAde Rising, where our heroes search for the Slug Sannin and I begin to fix what I think is one of the most head scratching times in canon. Oh and somebody dies, who, you'll just have to wait and guess on the poll that should be up on my profile.

Until next time have a happy...whatever length of time you want.

By the way could somebody tell me if it matters whether or not I'm trying to be factually accurate? Because I've been antagonizing over things like the time the snake burst through the wall. Is this something I should do or can I skip it?

Either way, here's an omake staring everybody's favorite evil old man...Danzo!

Omake: Are You Sure You're Not Senile?

"I demand the boy be put in my ROOT division!" Danzo demanded.

"You mean the ROOT division that I ordered disbanded?" Sarutobi asked raising one eyebrow quizzically.

"Yes." Danzo replied before changing it a second later to, "I mean no, not that ROOT, I meant to say…FLUTE?"

"You mean your band that's made up of all your former ROOT members who are supposed to get together to perform concerts for the people?" Sarutobi asked.

"That's the one." Danzo answered quickly.

"Well it goes against my better judgment, but Kami knows your band's percussion section is terrible…" Sarutobi began.

"No argument here," Hizashi said.

"No rhythm at all," Choza added.

"They couldn't find the beat if they had a dozen tracker-nin," Shibi actually joked and believe me Aburame do not often tell jokes so you know how bad they are.

"All right, Naruto is transferred to your FLUTE division."

"You do realize that you've just committed me to the very training you swore you never would," Naruto told Sarutobi.

"You do realize that I just gave you an excuse to crash cymbals together for long periods of time," Sarutobi replied.

"You do realize I will abuse this privilege to disturb you at all hours of the day and night." Sarutobi's eyes and mouth got very wide causing his pipe to fall out. "Naruto is no longer part of the FLUTE division!"

"Curses, foiled again." Danzo swore.


	10. Chapter 10: Road Trip

_Greetings readers,_

_First of all as some of you know I've got a poll on who you the audience think is going to die during this arc and as of June 6th, 2014 with nine voters here are the results:_

_Tied for 6th place with 0 votes are: Naruto, Anko, Tsunade, Itachi, Kakashi, Gamabunta, Katsuyu, and Somebody not listed. Apparently nobody thought I'd kill the main character...go figure._

_Tied for 5th place with 1 vote a piece are: Sakura, Manda, an OC, and I'm bluffing. Props to whoever picked bluff, I didn't think anybody would choose it._

_Tied for 4th place with 2 votes each are: Shizune and Sasuke. I'm shocked more people didn't think Sasuke would die and I heard a good idea for why Shizune should die...will I listen who knows?_

_Tied for 3rd place at 3 votes each are the male Sannin: Orochimaru and Jiraiya. I have nothing to say here._

_In second place with 5 votes is the shark man Kisame. Not only did he get five votes but he also warranted two very well thought out explainations by The Fox Paradox 9 and Wyrtha._

_Finally taking 1st place with a kunai to the back of the head and an explosive note attached to it, thrown by seven voters is the silver haired medic...Kabuto. Oh he drew some hatred from the voters, almost everybody picked him to die, I hope that doesn't mean that if he lives, I'll be the one they target._

_Naruto and Spider man are the property...well you probably know who they belong to...here's a hint, its not me._

_Previously, stuff happened...something about a strip club and Anko and Kin and Kurenai. I think Sasuke's in a coma or dead. I don't know...I wasn't paying attention to him._

Chapter 10: TSUNAde Rising 1: In which our hero learns to hate road trips.

Naruto Road Journal Entry 1

It has been three days since Anko and I left Konoha along with the toad to find his old teammate. If this was a manga, we could skip these days and go straight to the town where she was staying...maybe have a moment or two somewhere else for fun...but no this is real life and we've got to go the slow way. I swear I would have an easier time finding Tsunade if I was just working with a loaf of bread, a rock, and a monkey. Of course I'd want Anko there too, she's the best part of this mission.

Anyway, how do you think our much self-hyped Toad Sage, "great elite" and the force behind "the greatest spy network ever" would go about searching for his teammate?

A.) Send a message out to all of his spies informing them of who he was after and ordering them to send word if they see her.

B.) Use his intimate personal knowledge of his teammate to lead us where she'd most likely be.

C.) Summon a toad who could possibly talk to her summons and use them to find her.

If you chose any of the above, you'd be wrong. I'll admit there's a chance that he did one or more of these things when I wasn't looking, but those chances would be the same as the chances that I would run back to Konoha, find Choji, and make sweet, sweet love to him until I'm six months pregnant with our third child. That's no chance by the way, Choji's nice but I don't think of him that way. That and guys can't get pregnant, I have no idea why so many people don't understand that.

Anyway, the toad man said and I quote, "I will use my 'Super-Pervert Senses' to lock onto the largest breasts in the Elemental Nations and track them." I am not joking.

"And the world's largest breasts belong to Tsunade?" I had to ask.

"Yep."

"Great, our village was attacked and we're on a quest to find a pair of saggy old woman boobs," Anko deadpanned.

"Truly this is the most important mission in the history of the entire world," I added, matching her tone.

"The joke's on you two, Tsunade has mastered a technique that leaves her looking just as beautiful as the day we met, her chest is as firm as ever, her hair..." Jiraiya began.

"You want to keep going?" I asked the violent violet vixen I was teaming with.

"Sure, the pervert will catch up."

"Unfortunately." So we left the toad man behind to look off into space and describe his teammate in flowery language...maybe he had a crush on her or something, I don't really care.

That was the first time we ditched Jiraiya as he was ranting and it wouldn't be the last. Anko and I have had many enjoyable conversations while walking. Sometimes we'd talk about the people we'd see on the road, like some old hippies we saw that first time or we'd talk about music, movies, manga we'd been reading, anything two friends would talk. And in every conversation, Anko would flirt with me or do these little things to try and fluster me. Like I made a comment that I was glad she was there to watch my back, next thing I know, Anko jumped on my back so she could "watch it better." So with a beautiful woman on my back I did the only logical thing...I carried her for a while, and I have to say when she got off, my back never felt colder.

She is definitely the best teammate I could have asked for and the toad is definitely the worst. I've already talked about his stupid plan for finding Tsunade, but his general attitude is annoying. He acts like he didn't do anything wrong and that I'm still supposed to be his apprentice. Why would I want to work with somebody who has tried to kill me? Twice. For example a couple of nights into our mission we were camping for the night:

"Naruto, you've had a long enough break, its time for us to get back to your training." Jiraiya stated.

"What training?" I asked.

"Summoning toads of course, and the first step is for you to resign the toad contract and reinforce your connection with them."

"You mean reestablish," I corrected, "The Old Man told me how the connection was severed after you first tried to kill me."

"I wasn't trying to kill you, that was part of your training," he tried to explain.

"Training?" I echoed in contempt, "What sort of training involves telling someone 'If you don't want to die, figure it out yourself' and then showing them of of a cliff? Anko have you ever had to do something like that?"

"No," Anko replied, surprisingly quiet, "but it sounds like something my old sensei would do."

I still don't know who she was talking about, but it seemed like Jiraiya took the comparison hard and didn't but me for the rest of the night.

* * *

NARUTO ROAD JOURNAL ENTRY 2

The toad seems to have recovered from our talk, as he's been trying to convince me to sign again. He's been going on and on about how awesome the toads are how nothing could beat them.

"They're the largest of all summons and have many abilities." the toad explained/boasted, "Did you see how a minor one stopped that three headed snake?"

"No, as I recall, I stopped that snake myself and I was then crushed by a giant toad that landed on the snake. A task that could have been accomplished by any large enough rock." I answered.

"But can a rock shoot out water or oil? Can your rock carry you hundreds of miles or fight a Bijuu?" Jiraiya countered.

"Probably not, but the rock's loyalty would be to me. Plus, toads don't have any natural offensive abilities, no claws or teeth to fight with. What am I supposed to hope that they can slap their enemies away with their tongue or if the toad gets eaten then poison would get into the enemy's body? And you talk about going long distances...yeah, all of that is hopping going up and down, up and down, that's definitely how I want to travel...motion sick and flopping around. But most importantly, the toads are your summons. Anything I tell them, they would probably turn around and tell you. So for the last time...no, I have no interest in summoning your toads." And with that I walked off ahead of Jiraiya.

* * *

NARUTO ROAD JOURNAL ENTRY 3

I saw a cloud today that looked exactly like one of my nanites. It doesn't mean much of anything, I just thought it was neat. Also, I have been fortunate, for the past few days I have been able to make a clone in private to continue working on one my latest project, it should be operational soon.

* * *

_The following events take place during the Second Shinobi World War at Ningyuan Pass._

It was an isolated location on the Suna side of a pass between the border of the Land of Wind and the Land of Stone, in a barren and lifeless part of the world that was useless location in any time but war. Both sides sent either their less powerful or least liked shinobi to fight there if for no other reason than to get rid of them. Until now, both sides had been satisfied with killing the patrols they could find outside the others base or raiding any supply convoys they could.

Then the Tsuchikage realized just how important the pass was and started sending more troops there. If the base fell Iwa would have an opening wide enough to send dozens of ninja through at a time as opposed to the small squads or solo ninja that could sneak across the borders now. That was why the Tsuchikage had sent team after team at the base before Suna could react.

Chaotic was the only way to describe the scene. Suna and Iwa ninja were all fighting desperately for control of the base. Suna's four teams were outnumbered two to one including one shinobi who possessed the Yōton _(Lava Bloodline) _and another who had apparently signed a contract with the rhinoceros clan. The summoned rhino had barreled through the canyon pass, setting off and destroying most of the traps, before breaching the outer wall.

The few remaining traps had managed to cut down a few Iwa nin by surprise but with one Yōton: Shakugaryūgan no Jutsu _(Lava Release: Scorching Stream Rock Technique) _the traps were destroyed and the Suna-nin controlling them was killed. Iwa nin swarmed through the hole into quarters that were too close or small for the rhinoceros summon to enter, but large enough for puppets to be used, slightly evening the numbers.

The two sides clashed back and forth with kills not coming from the ninjas' skills but with luck in finding openings to deliver a fatal blow. Eventually Suna's forces were reduced to three: Chonghuan Yuan, a newly promoted chunin, Korobi, a genin puppeteer and his sole remaining puppet, and Kiri their medic-nin. All three had been forced back into the command center while the building was surrounded by ten surviving Iwa-nin.

"Status?" Chonghuan asked but already knowing most of the answer.

"Our friends are dead, the wall's breeched, the enemy is inside and surrounding us, we're pretty much out of weapons and food…" Korobi stated in a mix of fear and dread.

"And we're missing As the Kunai Twirls and today was the day Rei was going to confront Asuka over her trying to ruin Rei's wedding to Shinji," Kiri finished.

"Which sucks because it should be a great catfight, besides Shinji and Rei deserve to be together."

"Are you crazy! It should be Asuka and Shinji getting married, Rei stole him from her."

"Stole him? What are you talking about? They broke up after Asuka…"

"Guys! Impending doom here!" Chonghuan interrupted.

"Sorry," both fans of the show replied.

"I doubt Iwa's out there talking about some show."

Meanwhile outside:

"I wish the Tsuikage had put this mission off a day…I wanted to see Asuka and Rei's catfight!" one Iwa-nin said as he caught his breath.

"Yeah, the old man just doesn't understand free time," the lava user added.

"What do we have for weapons?" Chonghuan asked.

"Ourselves, a few kunai and shuriken apiece, my chakra scalpels, and what's left of Korobi's puppet," the medic-nin answered.

"A senbon launcher with a few poison packs and a flame thrower," Korobi added. Chonghuan stared at a nearby kerosene lamp for a few moments. As he started running over their situation and everything around them a stray thought popped into his head, a memory from his genin days when his team had worked harbor security with a team from Kirigakure...and then an idea formed in his mind.

"Do you have any chakra pills on you?" Chonghuan asked the medic-nin. Kiri reached into his pocket and pulled a few out. Chonghuan grabbed one of them and ate it. "Come on, I've got an idea."

Outside the building, the leader of the Iwa forces readied his men, "If they aren't out in ten seconds, melt the door down and kill them."

"Sir!" his second-in-command shouted, "on the roof!" The leader looked up in time to see eight identical clones of one of the defenders leap off of the roof toward the invaders. As one, the Iwa-nin threw shuriken into the clones who popped feet away and soaked the attackers. "A Suna ninja that uses Mizu Bushin _(Water Clones), _now I've seen everything," the second-in-command declared. A smell filled the commander's nose and his eyes widened in realization.

"It's not water…" The door burst open and half of a Suna war puppet flew out spewing flames that lit up his stunned comrades like kindling. "It's kerosene!" More fire flew this time from fireballs launched by the one who made the clones.

Distracted by the fire, many of Iwa's remaining ninja were cut down by the Suna defenders leaving only a pair of badly wounded men who were forced to fall back under the rhino's protection. Chonghuan looked at the retreating enemy and knew that they'd be back and soon.

"We need to start repairs," he ordered. "Get ready to protect the base again."

"With what!?" Korobi asked. "All of our stationary traps are gone! Our teammates are dead! And there's a hole in the wall!"

"What about the puppets?" Chonghuan asked pointing to the remains of one of their teammates puppets. "Can you fix them?"

"The damage to them is too extensive, most of them are wrecked beyond repair."

"Can you scavenge them then, take a usable arm off of one and put it onto another puppet body?"

"No," Korobi answered. "Our puppets are individually crafted and meant to work in their own unique ways. It would be like training all of your life to fight with a sword and your sword is taken away and replaced with a nun-chuck. I could probably use the remains of my other puppet to fix this one, but past that. It can't be done."

"What about making a new puppet by finding parts that could work together?"

"It would be like make a human and some of the body parts you have to work with are from kids or animals." Korobi explained. Both of his teammates stared at him for his choice in simile.

"That's just wrong." Kiri stated. "Besides the fact that animal parts would be wholly incompatible, the various immune systems would constantly attack each other unless they patient was heavily drugged. Plus add in the incompatibility in the chakra systems, the patient would never be a ninja based on that alone...unless you could keep one of the patients chakra systems intact and thread it through the remaining parts then you could..."

"Are you really trying to figure out how to do it?" Korobi asked. The two of them started arguing but Chonghuan wasn't paying attention to them and instead was looking at an Iwa shinobi who's throat he had cut early in the fight and a thought entered his head.

" Korobi," Chonghuan began interrupting the argument, "how do you control your puppets?"

"I use chakra strings and attach them to the puppet on various points and control its actions by moving my fingers."

"Can you move other things like you would a puppet?"

"Depends on how conductive the object is to chakra, the wood the puppets are made from is routinely exposed to chakra laced water so it would be easier to work with and the metal has at least on section of chakra conductive metal to attach a string to."

"So as long as whatever you use can conduct chakra, you can control it?"

"Yes."

"What about that?" Chonghuan asked pointing at the dead shinobi.

"That's a human being."

"That's a corpse," Chonghuan corrected, "could you control it?" Both of his teammates suddenly realized his intention.

"It's not right."

"Not right? What exactly is right about this whole damn situation? Is our being stuck out here instead of being with our families right? Is them attacking us right? Is killing them right? Is watching our comrades die at their hands right? Tell me, what is right?"

"Is it right to do something morally wrong?" Kiri countered.

"They will come back, in greater numbers knowing we are weak, if we can't stop them then everyone we know will be in danger. If keeping our country safe means I have to the morally wrong thing...then I will. Now, could you control a corpse with your strings?" Korobi didn't say anything, he just lifted his hand toward the corpse. For a few seconds nothing happened, and then slowly the body began to rise like something out of a horror film.

"Looks like I can." Korobi stated his voice filled with a mix of sorrow and horror.

"All right, here's the plan. Korobi repair your puppets as best as you can and scavenge as much as you can from the battlefield, we'll need all the extra kunai and shuriken as we can get. Kiri gather the dead and seal ours to send home. With their dead, treat them enough so that we don't have to worry about a limb coming off and if you can't treat them then just leave them outside the walls to scare and enrage our enemies."

"And what will you be doing?"

"I'm going to head to the communication room and send messages out to every nearby post for help. When that's done, I'm going to repair the wall and repair or build as many traps as I can so we don't have to rely on our new puppets." Chonghuan stated and then ran to the communication room.

Two weeks later, reinforcements finally arrived. They found the base under attack, but before they were close enough to help they watched as several bodies rose up and attacked the invading force, driving them off. Few people would know the full truth about the Battle of Ningyuan Pass, just that a few of their shinobi had fought off dozens of Iwa's strongest and lived to tell the tale.

* * *

NARUTO ROAD JOURNAL ENTRY 4

It's been a week and the toad is now resorting to bribery and appealing to my old dreams to get me to work with him again.

"Look kid, Sarutobi-sensei told me about your dream, you want to become Hokage. It's a big dream but you're in luck, I'm probably the best guy in Konoha that you could have train you. I was a student of the Third Hokage, who was a student to the first two Hokage, and I personally taught the Fourth Hokage, perhaps the best Hokage of them all. That's gotta mean something to you."

"Yeah, it means you couldn't hack it as Hokage." I replied.

"No, it means that I know what it takes to be Hokage and I can help you become it. Plus if you're lucky, I could teach you the signature jutsu of your hero."

"And that would be?" I asked.

"The Rasengan!" Jiraiya announced proudly.

"Who's the Rasengan?"

"The Rasengan isn't a who its the jutsu, the signature jutsu of the Fourth Hokage."

"Oh," I replied.

"Oh?" Jiraiya repeated, "That's all you can say? I thought you'd be bouncing off the walls to learn your hero's signature jutsu."

"I have new heroes now," I answered. "So why should I care about this...Rasen-thingy?"

"Besides being the Fourth's signature jutsu," Jiraiya began, annoyance creeping into his voice, "it is the pinnacle of jutsu creation; as it requires no hand signs...like so!" The toad pulled his right hand back and suddenly a spinning ball of chakra formed in it. He shot his hand forward and slammed the ball into a nearby tree carving a perfect hole into it. "Well what do you think about that?" Anko looked at the damage stunned.

"So you can put holes in trees, what else does it do?" I asked, trying to sound as unimpressed as possible.

"When this baby's complete then you'll see what it can really do!" Jiraiya boasted.

"What's it missing?"

"What?"

"You said when its complete, what more is supposed to be done to it?"

"When an elemental affinity is added to it, you should see what it does!"

"Okay, show me."

"What now?" Jiraiya asked.

"Yeah, why not?"

"Because its too dangerous to just throw around and show off to ungrateful brats. When I add my element to it...forests tremble, mountains quake, and the world itself shakes in fear!" Jiraiya boasted.

"I'll take the risk."

"I cannot risk the world to appease your whims."

"You have no idea how to add an element to it, do you?"

"Well..."

"So if you can't do the 'ultimate jutsu' why should I bother learning it from you? I mean judging solely by what you've done here, this move is only effective at putting holes in things...so really its just an overhyped punch." The toad ninja's eyes narrowed and he growled out, "You better not disrespect the jutsu my student created."

"I'm not disrespecting it; I'm saying I don't need it. I've already got moves to do the same thing..." I activated my right arm's gauntlet, "...like this." I punched the same tree he had and made a hole in it just as large as Jiraiya's.

"Not bad kid," Jiraiya admitted, "but still nowhere as good as the Rasengan."

"But can it do other things like change size or be used at a distance?"

"No, can yours?"

"Can't change size, although that might be something to look into, but I can use mine at a distance." I showed off a long range air blast by punching at a dead tree beside the white haired pervert. The air whipped his hair around as it passed by him before it struck the tree. The tree creaked and groaned as it toppled over and fell with a crash. Jiraiya was facing away from me, but I'd bet his eyes were wide with shock before he schooled his features.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"No," I answered as I shifted the gauntlets to energy mode and fired a blast that put a hole clean through a boulder. "I can make holes at a distance too. Come on Anko, lets see if we can make it to a town tonight." I started walking down the road, Anko quickly moving to catch up to my side leaving the toad to examine the damage I left behind.

"Was that a good idea to show him all of that?" Anko asked.

"I just showed him stuff I've already done in public, he probably knew about it already. Besides I've got some new tricks I haven't used yet."

"Such as?" she asked.

"You'll see." I replied. Anko pouted at my refusal.

* * *

NARUTO ROAD JOURNAL ENTRY 5

We finally made it to Shukuba town, famous for having a lot of brothels...yeah I know the toad taking us to a town with three brothels per block, shocking for a man of his moral integrity. The toad checked us into a hotel and said that they only had two rooms available, a single or a room with 2 beds. Anko kicked him in the groin after his first suggestion of who slept where. His second suggestion would've had me sharing a room with him if I hadn't done something brilliant that night after the toad had gone off to see some lady named Emi or something, I wasn't listening.

I knocked on Anko's door. She opened it a few seconds later and I realized that she had been changing.

"Hi," I started, "Weird question but are you going to use your bathtub tonight?"

"I've already used it," she stated. "But if you want to take a bath in it go ahead."

"Actually I wanted to sleep in it tonight."

"What?"

"I don't trust Jiraiya, I'm certain he would try to pull something on me while I'm sleeping."

"He hasn't done anything so far." Anko pointed out.

"But that's because we were either close to Konnoha or you've been close by, he probably doesn't want to risk fighting both of us at once."

"Okay, but are you sure you want to sleep in my bathtub?"

"I've slept in worse spots." Anko stepped aside and let me in. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet, before I let you sleep in my tub I want to know something."

"Okay."

"Does it hurt?"

"Does what hurt?"

"When you cover one of your arms in metal or grow an extra arm out of your back, does it hurt?" I paused at her question, thinking about it before I answered and unleashed my tentacles for the visual effect. "It's not a pleasant feeling, but I've actually gotten used to it. All I feel now is a...stream of metal that pours out and covers or forms whatever's needed."

"They're machines right? So are you always in control of them or can you tell them to run on their own?"

"Well for the most part I send them orders with my mind and they follow them, like my flesh arms. The big difference is sometimes they've got minds of their own."

"I noticed," Anko stated pointing is lower right arm that was poking around under the bed.

"Number Six," I stated annoyed, "is my most free spirited arm and usually the one I have to reign in." Number Six pulled itself out from under the bed with some yellow underwear in its clutches. "Yours?"

"Not mine."

"Put it back, I don't want to know where it came from." I ordered, Number Six obeyed and then stretched toward the bathroom to wash itself off.

"If that's what's under the bed, I don't think I want to sleep on it. I'd be better off sleeping on the wall."

"On the wall?"

"One of my old sensei's training exercises was to stick to a wall with chakra overnight and you had to sleep for part of it."

"Sounds intense, although it makes me wonder..." I walked over to the corner and extended two of my tentacles high up each wall and pushed chakra into each claw to stick to the wall. With the claws attached, I then rose up and used my tentacles to support my weight. It took some trial and error but eventually I was able to lay down comfortably. "Looks like I've got a hammock." Anko walked over and examined my set up.

"It looks very nice, but I better test it out," Anko stated and before I could respond, she sat on me and then turned to lie down. "Yes, very nice, I think I'll stay here tonight."

"Anko..." I began.

"Yes?" She practically purred.

"Get off."

"Most men aren't usually worried about whether the woman gets off...you're definitely a keeper." I think I sputtered out a response...I'm not sure, my mind froze and the next thing I knew Anko was back on her bed smiling happily, probably at my expense. I was about to say something to her when there was a sudden knock at the door. I opened the door and saw two men in black robes. One of the men looked at me and said, "You need to come with us."

* * *

_Author's Note: Originally this and the next chapter were going to be one whole chapter but I thought it would be too long so it got broken up. Next time the big fight scene you're expecting and more about the history of Suna. Chonghuan Yuan was a famous patriot and military commander of the Ming Dynasty, he's actually got an interesting story if you want to look it up. And finally the poll, congratulations to whoever guess an OC as several characters that don't exist in canon died during the Suna flashback. Ah, I'm just messing with you, the death in question is yet to come. If you haven't please vote for who you think will die and check out any of the other stories I've written including a series of one-shots about Naruto fan-fiction themes._

_Until next time, enjoy an Omake I wrote on April 20._

Jiraiya's Audience

"...and she smells like every wonderful kind of flower put in a vase on a table of your favorite foods, that's the woman we're looking for." Jiraiya finished.

"Hey man she sounds great, can we come look for her too?"

Jiraiya's eyes snapped open and he looked to see twenty to thirty old hippie guys sitting around him.

"Who are you?"

"We are retired shinobi from The Village Hidden in the Weeds and we're traveling to Burning-Nin, but after your story, we want to follow you." The same old guy answered.

"What happened to the two who were here?"

"The blond kid and the purple haired babe? They left a couple hours ago man."

"Son of a..." Jiraya swore as he began running to catch up to them.

"Hey man, if we can't come with you could we at least have whatever you took before you started your story? It was really far out." Jiraya stopped, pulled a bag full of green herbs out of his jacket, threw it to the hippie, and started running again.

"Thank you magic story man!"


End file.
